Dog Days
by Hori
Summary: Someone is poisoning mutants, disguising a mutation-disrupting narcotic in common recreational drugs. Wolverine and Kitty must find the one responsible before innocent lives are lost, as one mutant's powers spiral dangerously out of control. Post AvX
1. Chapter 1

**_Greetings, readers._**

**_I've been reading some of the more recent X-Men books and felt inspired to start this story. It features an original character, but the plot is not entirely focused on her, and her story is not exactly what you would call typical. I hope you give it a chance and take the time to read and review. This tale takes place after the events of AvX and Schism. As such, I understand that some of the characters involved may not be familiar to more casual readers. I'll do my best to write in such a way that everyone's roles and abilities are made clear without having to derail the narrative to explain who/what they are._**

**_Enjoy!_**

**_Hori out._**

* * *

_"Cry 'Havoc!' and let slip the dogs of war." -William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar_

* * *

_West 63rd St and Central Park West_

_Manhattan, NY_

_United States_

It took her three separate attempts to slide the brass key into the lock, and even then, she forgot for half an instant which direction to turn it in. She let out a tiny sigh of relief when the bolt finally slid into the unlocked position, and the door gave way to the dark entrance of her penthouse. She felt the growing warmth in her neck and cheeks dissipate a bit as the embarrassment that was threatening to overtake her subsided slightly.

"A few too many?"

Luna Visconti turned to face her companion with a wry grin and a raised eyebrow. She wanted to look smooth and elegant and predatory, as though this whole scenario came easily to her, as though inviting men back to her apartment was something that she was entirely comfortable with. It wasn't. Not because she didn't want it, or did not know how things were supposed to go, but because the circumstances that had brought her to this point could unravel at any moment, leaving her exposed for the unexperienced liar that she was.

"Not yet," she said mischievously.

She had met Calvin at an industry party, where photographers and designers and all manner of big wigs for the runway and magazine world rubbed elbows, and the models were expected to look dazzling and not say anything too remarkably unintelligent. Alcohol flowed in almost obscene amounts, the bathrooms became crowded with something other than men and women needing to relieve themselves, and those who had come to the event with an agenda found it easier and easier to satisfy as the night wore on.

In Luna's opinion, she had done a rather remarkable job of keeping her wits about her thus far. A few editors and photographers had recognized her from some recent shoots, and she managed to stay as placid and graceful as any other seasoned model at the party. She sipped champagne slowly, cautiously, deathly afraid of becoming noticeably drunk in front of the people she meant to build a career with. Even more frightening was the possibility that someone might recognize her for who she was: The up-and-coming and decidedly underage daughter of Donata Visconti, the model-turned-actress-turned-designer who now resided in Los Angeles.

Her mother had never expressly forbade her from attending such parties, but one thing she had insisted upon, more through tacit implication than anything else, was never, ever using her family name and connections to make her career sail more smoothly. She was not unreasonable about it; Of course many people would recognize her last name and make the connection on their own, but the last thing that Luna's mother would tolerate was her daughter becoming sloppy drunk at an industry event and besmirching her family reputation.

"I can't stop you from trying to model if that's what you want," she had said once. "But if I even get the slightest indication that you're using the opportunity to become a drunken, drug-addled buffoon riding on the coattails of a recognizable name like some of those other airheads, I'll drag your ass out of New York and into prep school so fast you'll think you were in a time warp."

Luna had only gone to the party to test the waters, to be seen, to get a little experience for such events under her belt. She was polite, gracious, and made an effort to flirt only slightly with some of the men who flirted first, always painfully conscious that it might all come crashing down the moment someone recognized her dark, wavy hair or green eyes from this or that magazine shoot, and informed someone, security or, worse, some publisher, that Donata Visconti's sixteen-year-old daughter was kicking back booze at a party where many guests were returning from the restroom bright-eyed and sniffling loudly.

That was precisely why it had taken her the better part of an hour to warm up to Calvin. He had been as affable as any other man had been at the party; Making small talk with her once their eyes had met at the bar, complimenting her dress and the jewelry she wore, but never once making any note of her beauty, or what runway events or magazines he had seen her in. Maybe that was what had made her like him in the first place. She was beautiful, she knew. It was not arrogance, but simply a matter of reasoning: She looked almost exactly like her mother, and her mother had been called beautiful for as long as Luna had been alive. Ergo, Luna was beautiful. But the fact that Calvin never made the slightest mention of what he thought of her looks, well, that was unique among men who took an interest in her, and being unique was certainly a turn-on.

"I hope you're not offended by this," Calvin said loudly over the mild din of house music that played throughout the club.

"By what?" Luna said, bracing herself slightly. Had he figured out that she was not the sophisticated adult she was pretending to be?

"This doesn't seem like your kind of deal," he said, smiling so that she would know that he did not mean it in a negative way. She liked his smile. She liked most everything about his face, as a matter of fact.

"How so?" she asked, tilting back her glass of champagne. How many glasses was this now? She had been careful to keep track at the beginning of the night, but now the figure had gotten lost somewhere in the fuzzy recesses of her mind. Oh well, she felt fine, and it was not as though she had to drive.

"I mean you don't seem to be enjoying yourself." He put a hand on her knee. Not at all sleazy or awkward. He did it with confidence and poise. She liked his hand there.

Luna gulped down the rest of her champagne, smiled, and gently pushed his hand away. Not in a way that suggested it wasn't welcome. Simply that his time enjoying the feeling of her skin under his palm had expired for now. She did not have much experience with men, let alone men older than she was. Calvin was perhaps in his mid twenties if she had to guess. But she knew enough from watching her mother over the years, the way she kept them at an amicable arm's distance, not letting them in, but not barring them so completely that they lost interest.

"I'm having fun now," she said.

That had been about two hours and five drinks ago. Luna still thought she was doing an admirable job of holding everything together, but her anxiety at actually bringing a guy back to the penthouse, let alone the penthouse that was, in fact, her mother's, was starting to seep through. Her heart thumped in her chest with a thick, insistent rhythm. Her stomach churned slightly with anticipation, as though her mother might suddenly burst through the door and discover her. That was ridiculous, she knew, but the alcohol was amplifying her stress from the situation, and she was not well seasoned with being drunk. But she wasn't drunk, was she? Well, not that drunk. Just a little.

Calvin let out a low, long whistle when Luna finally found the lightswitch. He admired the sleek, modern décor of the penthouse, turning in a slow circle, dropping his outer coat on a nearby couch as he took it in. Luna found herself doing the same. She had spent so many years of her life in similarly-decorated homes and apartments that she never considered what it would look like from an outsider's perspective. Almost immediately, she realized that it would look odd to see her gawking at her own residence, and she stopped.

"I'm in the wrong line of work," Calvin grinned. "The modeling gig really pays off, huh?"

"You'd be surprised," Luna replied, not knowing why she didn't at least tell part of the truth. Would it be so terrible to admit that she did not actually own the place? Yes. Yes it would be. Calvin wasn't interested in some teenage girl who didn't know how to balance a checkbook or pay her own rent. He had fallen for the illusion of maturity that Luna had projected. He believed that she was an independent, experienced woman. Eventually, of course, he would figure out the truth, but she would deal with that later. Now... Now was just going too well, and she was having far too nice a time. She had insisted on living alone, outside of her mother's influence to get a little life experience. Well, here it was, and she wasn't about to let it slip away.

"Have a seat," she gestured at the couch where he had placed his coat. "I'll be right back."

"Do you have anything to drink?"

Luna closed her eyes, furrowing her brow. She could have slapped herself in the forehead. Inside of her refrigerator, there was next to nothing. Two cups of yogurt and an apple. Maybe some cheese and a bottle of perrier. Certainly no drinks she could offer him. Not the kind that he was referring to anyway. How could she have forgotten something like that? She could have slipped into a liquor store on the way back to her building.

"Just one sec," she smiled, dodging the question, pretending she hadn't heard him. She just needed to use the bathroom. Just to gather her wits. Then she would be back.

She looked at herself in the bathroom mirror and practically winced. Her mascara had run slightly under one eye, leaving a small, greyish circle under her lower lid. At the party it had probably not be noticeable, but in the bright light of the penthouse it made her look like a crack addict. She pulled a cloth wipe from a package behind the mirror and dabbed at the errant makeup until it matched the other side.

She ran cold water on the tap a wet her hands, pressing the moisture onto her neck and nape. The champagne was settling in her head, making her feel like she was steaming out of her ears. As an afterthought, she put a cupped hand under the water and drank the small handful.

Luna assessed the contents of her clutch, making sure what she had believed to be there was still inside. First she found a small tin of mints, one of which she popped into her mouth, hoping it would combat the stench of alcohol on her breath. She didn't know if Calvin would mind that or not, but it felt better to have the cool taste of mint on her tongue and throat. She found the small bottle of perfume and, certain that she now smelled of sweat and cigarette smoke and the other predictable aromas of club parties, spritzed the underside of her throat, rubbing her wrists into the perfume, making sure it carried along her person in the right places.

Lastly, she found was she had really been looking for. She took the condom, still sealed in its small square of aluminum wrapping, and pulled open the top of her dress, tucking it into her bra.

She looked into the mirror, once against assessing herself. She placed both hands on the marble countertop. This hadn't been the plan, not entirely, but it was not something she was entirely opposed to either. Sex was just sex. That seemed to be the attitude that everyone older than her had always appeared to maintain, and after losing her virginity the past year to a boy she had liked back in California, she had to say she was inclined to agree. It was wonderfully intense and confusing and pleasurable, but at the end she felt no different; No burden of shame or uplifting sensation of newfound womanhood. Maturity and wisdom came from experience, not a singular act. And this experience tonight would add to both, no matter how it went.

"First one-night stand," she said to her reflection. "Are you ready for this? Are you sure?"

She paused a moment, and then in reply, turned off the bathroom light and walked out.

She found Calvin hunched over the black glass coffee table, his leather wallet sitting beside a glass of water that he had helped himself to. At first, it did not seem to Luna that there was anything particularly remarkable about the presence of his wallet outside of his jacket pocket, but then she made a note of what he was doing with one of the credit cards he had procured from it.

"Come here," he patted the seat next to him on the couch. "I've got just enough for both of us." He tapped the edge of the card down firmly, rubbed his finger along the edge, and rubbed the pad of his digit vigorously along the inside of his mouth along the gum line.

On the table were two neat, clean lines of white powder. Luna felt her stomach flip for a moment. This was a new development.

"Coke?" she asked, trying to sound as cool and nonchalant as possible. Of course she had been at least partially exposed to the usage of drugs during the brief time she had been working in fashion modeling, but she had yet to work up the guts or nerve or reason to try anything. She had never even smoked a cigarette before.

"Not quite," Calvin said, and gave her that placid, reassuring grin again. His smile made her feel better, but she did not yet sit down. "It's a type of synthetic amphetamine. It'll snap you out of the booze a little."

Luna could feel herself frowning, despite all of her mental effort to make her face remain neutral. It was not exactly as though she did not want to try it. What she was feeling was more akin to the apprehension one felt while riding to the top of a very tall roller coaster. It was the gut-sinking feeling of the unknown, the sudden lack of assurance in one's own actions. It was fear, plain and simple. She was scared to do it. And she resented that fear.

"Hey," Calvin's smile disappeared, sudden concern in his eyes. "Do you knot want to? I'm sorry. It's just that you didn't have anything to drink in the fridge and I thought you might want to... You know, instead."

Luna smile. He was such a sweet guy. A good guy. She felt better almost instantly, and walked over to him, sitting where he hand indicated, making sure to position herself so that their thighs touched unavoidably.

"It's okay," she said, "It's just..."

She leaned in to kiss him, closing her eyes. His lips accepted hers, she felt him reach a hand up, pushing through her thick hair and cradling one side of her head. She opened her mouth slightly, felt their tongues touch and slide over one another, felt him tug slightly on her bottom lip with his teeth. She returned the favor, feeling his stubble rub the tender flesh of her mouth like fine sandpaper. She had never kissed someone with legitimate five o'clock shadow. She reached up her own hand and brushed his cheek, feeling the roughness of his short whiskers, loving the scraping she felt as she brushed them with her fingernails.

She broke the kiss suddenly and firmly. He made to close the distance again, to kiss her neck, but she stopped him.

"I want to," she gestured at the two white lines of powder on the coffee table.

"Are you sure?"

She kissed him again, this time lightly on the cheek, and felt the hot rush of arousal and alcohol burning her from her chest to her cheeks. "Yeah."

Calvin reached into his inner jacket pocket, searched for a moment, and produced a clear plastic section of some kind of thick tube or straw. He handed it to her.

For a moment, Luna worried that she would do it wrong, that she would embarrass herself and that Calvin would be turned off by her novice disposition. Maybe he sensed it from her, or maybe he was just that kind of gentleman, but he put a hand on her shoulder and guided her along.

"Plug one nostril and inhale half into the other. Don't just breathe in, you've got to inhale sharply. Then switch to the other side. It'll burn just a little bit. That's normal. Just don't sneeze."

He meant the last part as some kind of joke, and Luna forced herself to smile. Her palms had begun to sweat, and she subtly wiped them on the edge of the couch before leaning over, placing the straw in one nostril and plugging the other.

She sucked air into her nose with all the force her lungs could provide. Without waiting to feel the sensation the chemical might give her, fearing she would lose her nerve, she quickly switched sides and finished the line. She sat up sharply, sucking more air into her nose, plugging them each in turn with her fingers, trying to keep her eyes from watering and ruining her makeup.

She felt Calvin take the straw from her hand and set it on the table. She could taste the compound in the back of her throat. It was harsh and sour like burned plastic, and dripped from the back of her soft palette into her mouth. Her eyes still watered a little, and her ears began to ring.

"How does that feel?" she heard Calvin ask, but now he sounded about a hundred feet away.

"It's..." was all she could manage.

The burning that had before resided only her her chest and neck seemed to be spreading. Her lungs and heart felt as though they were not so much pushing blood and oxygen into her limbs, but liquid fire, churning just beneath the surface of her skin. Her vision seemed to narrow, becoming darker and darker until there was nothing more than a fine point of light far in the distance, containing the entirety of her visible surroundings. She could see Calvin in that tiny speck. She was dimly away that he was holding one of her shoulders, if for no other reason than his hands felt as cold as ice compared to the burning heat of her own body.

Luna felt as though she was being pushed downward. Not in a bodily sense. She was fairly certain that she was still sitting on a couch in her penthouse. Nevertheless, her mind, her psyche, her soul felt as though it were being forced down into a cave, buried there, smothered in the chemical haze. There was a dropping sensation, as though the whole world hand suddenly lowered by three feet, and her stomach struggled to keep up. The heat persisted, and, if she was not mistaken, grew. Her extremities began to buzz, then tingle, then went numb altogether.

And then, behind the haze and fog of the drug she had snorted into her lungs and nasal cavity, there was something else. Just as blurred and unformed as the chemical effect on her mind, and yet altogether different. It was like a separate presence in a pitch black room. It was visually no different from the darkness, yet you knew in your gut that there was some one else there. Or something. There was something else stirring in her mind, skirting the edges of her awareness where the drug had made it difficult for her to see. To perceive.

Something had detected her lapse in control over her psyche, and was testing the waters to make itself known. She did not know how she was aware of this, but she was all the same. She felt it curl up around her, crushing her down, and down, and down into a hot, dark oblivion.

She felt that she might cry, but found that she could not.

* * *

Luna did not know how long she sat there like that. It felt like only a few minutes, but when she finally snapped out of her drug-induced stupor with a sudden furious gasp of air, the sky outside of the picture window was becoming the orange-purple of dawn. She coughed, felt something wet in her dry mouth, and wiped her lips with the back of her hand.

"Calvin?" she croaked, her throat as dry as fresh paper. He was nowhere to be seen. His jacket, his wallet, the white lines of powder on her coffee table, they were all gone. The glass of water was still there, though. She grabbed at it clumsily, almost knocking it over with hands and fingers that had become sore and stiff. Her whole body, in fact, felt as though it had aged fifty years in the time it had taken her to come too.

She drank the water, her mind beginning to piece together the nights events, and becoming equally angry and confused as things began to fall into place. Calvin must have left her when he realized just how far into her drugged state she had fallen. How could he just leave her like that? Was he really that kind of guy? Had her intuition failed so miserably? Why wouldn't he make sure she was alright before he left?

All of these questions began to burn with equal fervor, but all at once were pushed into the background when she lowered the glass from her lips and caught sight of it in her hand. The new, and far more pressing question then formed in her mind: _Why is my face bleeding?_

The glass had been stained almost totally red from the limited contact it had had with her lips. Her hand was similarly coated in thick, fresh, hot blood. She put her other hand to her face, to her mouth and nose, and that one too came away doused in crimson.

Luna darted up off the couch, ignoring the pain in her legs and lower back brought on by sitting so long in an awkward position and, she suspected, a hangover fueled by alcohol and whatever the hell Calvin had given her, and quickly made her way to the bathroom, almost tripping as she broke to a jog to make it the last few feet. She snapped the lights on and looked at herself. She could not help herself but scream, the wail coming out of her unbidden, starting low in confusion and ending high and animalistic in panic.

Her eyes, her ears, her mouth and nose, all were leaking blood rapidly enough for Luna to see it catch the light as it moved and rippled down her body. Her neck and chest and her stomach inside of her dress were already hot and sticky with the stuff.

"What's going on?" she asked her blood-soaked reflection as she grabbed a towel from the rack and pressed it to her face. "What's happening? _What's going on?_"

Why didn't her face hurt? She must have been cut somewhere, so why didn't her face hurt? Was this some kind of horrible allergic reaction? Was she overdosing? What had happened to her? Why had Calvin gone when he had seen what was happening? Did he go to get help? Was an ambulance already on its way? The questions began to pile up and did not cease in their intensity and rapidity.

Steeling herself for the horror she would see, she looked in the mirror again, and opened her mouth to search for the wound that must be producing the blood. As if on cue, three of her teeth came tumbling out, plinking and rattling into the sink like loose chips of porcelain. Again, Luna screamed, falling backwards onto the tile floor, covering her mouth, pressing both hands over her face tightly. She squeezed down, driven by fear and shock, hoping and praying that, with enough pressure, the incessant blood flow would stem. She was falling apart. _Why_ was she falling apart?

She had to pull herself together. She had to call for help. Keeping her mouth covered with one hand, she gathered her legs up beneath her and tried to stand.

With no pain, with no warning, her left knee joint snapped backwards with a sickening crack, the bones and cartilage scraping loudly against each other. Luna gasped, shut her eyes, and braced herself for agony that did not come. She opened one eye, peering down at her own body. The skin had split where the knee had broken and twisted. Blood poured out of the wound and onto the bathroom floor, which was by now nearly covered with streaks and drops and small pools of Luna's blood. She put a hand over the split in the skin of her knee, her stomach turning as her palm felt the hot flesh and blood and bone beneath it. She pushed hard, thankful that she still could feel nothing, digging her nails into the skin to try and hold the gash together.

Her nails snapped off one by one under the pressure of her grip. She felt her stomach twist.

Luna felt herself beginning to get woozy, whether from blood loss or shock, she did not know. She needed to get to her phone. She needed to get help. Where the hell had she left the damn phone?

It occurred to Luna then that there was a very good possibility that she was going to die. A sixteen year old wannabe fashion model with a rich, well-connected mother, overdosing on some godforsaken concoction that she had jammed up in her nose and dying in her New York penthouse. Exactly what her mom had warned her about. Exactly what she had always thought she was headed _away_ from. It would be a end that would upset few and surprise no one.

_Of course she OD'd. Some dumb, pretty little thing with no sense in her head, bringing strange men to her apartment and snorting any damn thing they put in front of her. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid._

There was another tearing sound, this time from the hand that still covered her mouth. She did not want to look, did not want to see what new horror was afflicting her body, but she had to. She pulled her hand away from her face, four more teeth falling out of her mouth in the process, and looked.

What she saw did not make any sense, and it terrified her to a level that she had never before experienced.

Along the back of her hand, the flesh had torn clean open. There was blood, yes. She had expected the blood. But there was also hair. No, not hair. There was fur. Dark, blood-soaked fur poked out from the gaping, sucking wound in her flesh. Luna felt her heartbeat like a hammer ramming into her sternum from inside her ribcage, and if her heart had burst clean out of her from sheer panic, she would not have been entirely surprised.

Luna opened her mouth to scream again, but the hinge of her jaw snapped and broke free, leaving her mouth agape and crooked, and in no position to make any human noise whatsoever. She felt her eyes roll back into her head, felt herself fall backwards, felt her skull hit the edge of the claw foot bathtub. And then Luna Visconti didn't feel anything.


	2. Chapter 2

_Three days later._

"You should have let me come alone, Logan."

"Not a chance, kid."

Kitty Pryde sighed. "Eventually I'm going to be middle aged. Will you finally stop referring to me as 'kid' then?"

"Probably not."

Kitty looked out through the rain-speckled passenger window of the black BMW towards the entrance of the American Towers building on Central Park West. She was almost certain that the person she was looking for wouldn't just walk right up to the front door without rendezvousing with them first, but it didn't hurt to check.

"You know she's not going to be thrilled that you're here. You didn't exactly leave things on amicable terms, from what I understand."

Logan exhaled through his nose, cracked the window of the driver's side door, letting a misting of rain into the cabin, and spat out the toothpick he had spent the better part of the past fifteen minutes gnawing on. "I did what I had to do. What I thought was right. And Kitty, if this is what Cerebra is reading it as, we should have brought a whole damn team. You didn't see some of the crazy shit that can happen when a Light goes on."

He was referring to the first mutants, the ones who had been unlucky enough to have their powers manifest in the days and weeks after the Scarlet Witch's spell had been broken, and new mutations had finally begun popping up in the world again. At first it had seemed a miracle; Mutants were going to survive as a species. Something had been wrong, though, new mutant's powers manifested violently and unpredictably, and only the touch of Hope Summers had been able to stabilize their wild and rapidly-growing abilities. It had seemed after some time that those early birth pangs had subsided, and mutantkind had gone on manifesting new abilities in new teenagers with little incident. The original Lights had long since stabilized. Those that had survived, anyway.

But then this new signal that had been zeroed in on by the school's computers read as a dangerously unstable manifestation of a new mutant, not unlike the signals that had been generated by the Lights. And calls had to be made.

_Rachel, _Kitty focused her thoughts, making them into words and complete sentences in her head, _Any updates from Cerebra?_

There was a pause, and then Rachel Grey's voice filled her head, like water pouring into a vessel, filling Kitty's waking mind.

_You really think I wouldn't have kept you up to speed if there was?_ She asked, a little testily. _No, nothing new. Just the same flaring signal. The mutation is highly unstable, whatever it is._

_Okay. Thank you, Rachel, _Kitty thought, doing her best to placate the mind reader. She was cranky, that much was certain. Being a powerful telepath that stayed at the Jean Grey school for any long period of time meant that sometimes Rachel's abilities got worked like a rented mule, to put it lightly. Kitty made a note of that, promising that she would treat her to some kind of spa day or massage treatment. Get her unwound a little bit. _How about Hope Summers? Has she arrived?_

_What are you talking about?_ Came Rachel's reply. _She's right on top of you._

"Hi guys."

Kitty whipped her head around. The voice was familiar, but it had startled her nonetheless. Hope Summers sat in the middle of the car's rear set of seats, her elbows resting on her knees, her green eyes bright and alert.

"How did-" Kitty began, but immediately stopped herself. Stupid question. Hope had slipped into the car the same way that Kitty would have: Phasing. Hope could mimic the mutant abilities of anyone within a reasonably close proximity. Combine that with the training she had received under Cable, and she could be a remarkably stealthy tactician when she wanted to be.

"Hope," Logan nodded, looking into the rearview mirror, not turning to face the girl. Apparently, he had not been at all surprised by Hope's sudden arrival. In all likelihood, he had smelled the girl long ago.

"Logan," Hope replied, in a similar monotone. Kitty felt the slight flare of radiant tension between the two, and hoped that it would stay beneath the surface.

"Rachel briefed you?" Kitty asked, diving into the matter at hand before either party found the gumption to say something that they might regret.

Hope nodded. "I'll do what I can. I still don't think it's a Light. Not a legitimate one, anyway."

"Why not?"

"It just doesn't feel right," Hope shrugged. "Mutants have been getting along just fine without my help in their manifesting powers for awhile now. For it to happen all of the sudden, just one time, feels weird."

Kitty could see the point. "Well, I'm glad you're here anyway."

"You might not be," Hope opened the rear passenger door out into the cool slightly drizzly mid-summer night, stepping out rather than phasing. "If this power is truly out of control, and it's not a Light, I don't know that you'll be completely safe if I start to mimic it. I can't always maintain control if its a particularly aggressive mutation. You both need to act quickly if that's the case."

Kitty marveled for half an instant at Hope's determination and stoic attitude when it came to saving mutant lives, or placing her own on the line. The girl had frequently disputed and questioned her role as an oft-proclaimed 'mutant messiah,' but there were times when Kitty could not help but believe, just a little, that she was the genuine article.

The light rain was not enough to even bother with any sort of jacket or an umbrella, and the trio simply lowered their heads in the light wind as they came up to the building's entrance. At the door, a man in an elaborate jacket and hat stood at near-attention. The building had a doorman. Kitty groaned inwardly. She hadn't considered what their plan was in that case, but Hope and Logan did not slow their pace, so neither did she.

The doorman, a middle aged, bespectacled man, saw them coming and helpfully opened the door, a practiced smile on his face.

"Who are we here to visit this eveni-"

He was interrupted when Hope slipped a taser out of her sleeve and jammed it into the doorman's torso. There was the rapid snapping noise of discharging electricity, and the man's eyes widened, a slight gasp escaping his lips, his eyes bugging, but almost as quickly his face drooped, and he slipped into unconsciousness. There was a seat nearby, and Hope caught the man's weight in her arms and sat him quickly and gently into the chair, folding his hands, making him appear as though he'd fallen asleep. In the hands of anyone else, the weapon's shock would have been painful and disorienting. In the hands of someone like Hope, who had long ago memorized the sensitive nerve clusters in the body, it was as effective as knock-out gas.

"Jesus, Hope!" Kitty hissed, her heart almost jumping into her chest from the surprise at her sudden action. "What the hell?"

"We don't have time to waste smooth-talking this guy, just praying he doesn't recognize any of us and call the police," Hope retorted. "We've wasted enough already. This mutant might go critical any second, and I have no idea what that could mean." She took a second look at the doorman. "He'll be fine."

Kitty looked at Logan.

"His heartbeat is stable, breathing is normal," Logan agreed. "He'll wake up thinking he might've had a stroke, but he'll be okay."

"Now which apartment?" Hope asked expectantly, forcing the inner door, usually operated by a buzzer or a keycode, open with a shove of her shoulder and the brittle cracking sound of the lock's inner mechanism breaking. Kitty didn't bother pointing out that her phasing made that unnecessary.

"Good question," Kitty admitted, staring at the bank of mail slots and buzzer intercoms.

Hope sighed in frustration. "Well, we can't go floor to floor and-"

"P4," Logan interrupted. "That's a penthouse level."

Kitty was about to ask how he had deduced that information so quickly, but then she saw what had caught his eye, and knew instantly that he was right; Of all of the mail slots, P4 was the only one that had become so inundated with letters and junk mail that the corners of envelopes were poking out of the opening. No one had checked the inbox for that residence in days. She peered at the slim paper label that displayed a name printed in a neat, tight font.

"Visconti," she said aloud. There was something about the name that was familiar. Not in a way that made her think that she had ever met someone with that surname, but nevertheless, she had the distinct feeling that she knew it. Or read it maybe. In any case, it didn't matter at the moment.

"Elevator going up," Kitty said in her best enthusiastic, vaudevillian cadence, trying to lighten the mood just a touch as Bobby Drake might have done, and failing.

* * *

Kitty felt Logan's body tense instantly as the elevator doors slid open with a soft ding. She heard him draw three heavy breaths in through his nose, and saw his fists ball up tightly. Hope did the same, sampling the air much as he had done, mimicking his sensory powers.

"Update for the girl without a super-powered nose?" Kitty asked, her voice unconsciously dropping down to a whisper.

"Blood," Logan and Hope said, speaking in unison.

"Tons of it," Logan added.

"But all from..." Hope sniffed the air again, "The same person?"

"I don't like this," Logan said. "Take it slow."

The penthouse apartments took up a whole half of the top floors, so it was not hard to find P4. Kitty saw a sheet of paper taped to the door handle. She grabbed it, popped it off, and read it aloud for Hope and Logan to hear.

"_Miss Visconti,_

_We have made a complaint to the building superintendent in regards to the level of noise coming from your apartment for the last three days and four nights. We do not know or care what activities you are engaging in within the privacy of your home, but please have more consideration for you neighbors in the future._

_Respectfully,_

_-The Residents of P3"_

Logan had no reaction other than a low 'humph' in response. Hope stepped forward and rapped sharply on the door.

"Miss Visconti," she said, projecting her voice to be heard through the thick, sturdy wood. "We're responding to your recent crisis. Please open the door. We're here to help."

They waited ten seconds, then Hope tried again, repeating the knocks and words, this time a bit louder.

Again, ten seconds passed, and Kitty could hear nothing but her own heartbeat.

"Well," she said finally, "How about I phase in there and unlock-"

"Don't even think about it," Logan growled under his breath. "I hear something in there. It's big. It's trying not to make noise, but I've got it now." He popped a single claw on one hand and stepped into the door's threshold. He looked at Hope, then at Kitty. "There's so much blood in the air I'm having trouble picking up anything else. Watch yourselves."

With that, he buried the adamantium claw into the door around the lock, cutting the whole mechanism away cleanly in one twisting motion of his wrist, letting the lock and bolt fall to the floor with a thud. Not pausing, he shoved the door open with his shoulder, sending the heavy slab of wood careening on its hinges and crashing into the interior wall, simultaneously releasing his remaining claws with their characteristic scraping noise of metal on metal. He braced himself, ready to take the brunt of any attack.

There was nothing but darkness inside, and while Hope and Logan could have easily made their way through the apartment without light, both utilizing Logan's exceptionally keen eyesight, Kitty was not so well equipped. Knowing this, Logan reached into the darkness and flipped the switch he found on the wall.

"Shit..." Kitty whispered, her eyes widening as they took in what the dim entrance light revealed.

Blood, both old and brown, fresh and red, and every stage in between, covered nearly every inch of the visible floor and walls. As though the light had awakened her other senses, her mind seemed to suddenly grasp the rank stench of filth and decay that had been held at bay by the penthouse's heavy door. It flew into her nostrils like missiles of foulness. Kitty made an effort not to gag, covering her nose and mouth, unable to breathe for a moment.

"What..." she gasped, "What the hell is that?"

"Exactly what it smells like," Logan snarled, his own nose curling at the strong, thick stink. "Dead flesh. Something got torn apart in here."

"Something is _still_ getting torn apart in here," Hope corrected. "Some of it is fresh."

"Move in," Logan said. "Slow."

Kitty and Hope obeyed, maintaining roughly a triangular formation as they progressed into the penthouse that was still mostly dark. Kitty felt the gunmetal taste of adrenaline under her tongue as her boot sank into the blood-soaked carpet with an audible squish. She searched for more light switches, keeping her hand on the wall as she walked. She found one, and flipped it.

The penthouse's main living room, large and sleek and modern, was illuminated, and in what was becoming a familiar trend, they were greeted with smears and pools of brown and black and red. Kitty's foot came into contact with something, a small object of some kind, and she looked down.

A human jawbone, raw and wet and still connected to odd bits of vein and sinew, sat there in a small puddle of crimson.

Kitty's eyes began to track the ground, and she started to recognize more...parts. There were teeth, wads of hair, fingernails, bones of every variety, and long ribbons of skin. But there were not just human parts. There were also things that Kitty did not immediately understand or recognize. Dark chunks of matted fur, bones that could not have been human, teeth that were at least two or three inches from root to tip also lay scattered on the floor and walls.

Apparently sensing no immediate attack, Logan's claws slid back into the flesh of his arms with a click.

"This is weird," Hope whispered.

"That's literally the textbook definition of 'understatement,'" Kitty frowned. "There are pieces of...someone, all over the place. Of course its 'weird.'"

"Yeah," Logan said, "But its all from the same someone. There's enough blood and body parts here for a dozen people, but there's only one smell. And there's no sign of any kind of struggle, if you don't count all the blood and..."

"Chunks," Kitty supplied, sticking her tongue out slightly in spite of herself. But she realized that Logan was right. All the furniture was mostly upright and basically intact. Decorative sculptures and paintings had remained where they had been originally placed. There was even a glass of water, itself smeared with dry, brown blood, sitting idly on the coffee table. If this had been some kind of massacre, it was one of the most orderly and property-conscious massacres Kitty had ever heard of. "What about the other parts?"

"Another anomaly," Logan ground his teeth in thought. "There's a canine smell, for certain, but I can't pinpoint a unique animal scent. Everything just smells like the same person."

"No sign of a struggle... Except right here," Hope spoke up.

Kitty and Logan turned back towards the penthouse's front door, which Hope had partially closed to see the other side. It was criss-crossed with a latticework of gouges and claw marks, puckered and scarred almost to the point of being somewhat dug out in the middle. Hope bent down and picked up the severed lock, inspecting it.

"It's been rigged," she concluded after a moment, tossing the heavy collection of steel and brass to Logan, who took a moment to investigate for himself. "It was modified to never open from the inside. Whatever or whoever is in here, it's been trapped intentionally."

"Can't imagine why," Kitty observed, looking around at the bloodstained...everything.

There was a thump, a reverberation in the floor, and all three of them spun, looking back into the recesses of the penthouse. Logan crouched low, like a thickly-muscled cat, ready to spring. What crawled, what slithered, what dragged itself out of the darkness of an adjacent room was something that Kitty Pryde had not prepared for, and would have burned into her brain for the rest of her days.

It was humanoid only by the standard that it shambled along on two legs. Beyond that, there was nothing that Kitty could recognize as wholly human. There were only...aspects...pieces that could potentially make up a person. Here there was a hand, there a foot, there an eyeball and some teeth. Holding it all together were masses of red meat and muscle and dark, soaked, filth-covered fur. So mangled and indiscernible were the features, that it took Kitty the better part of ten seconds to fully realize that there was a head attached to the thing.

It was canine, or at least she thought it was. There were several parts that might have been dog-like. One of the feet was clawed and padded. There might have been a tail under there somewhere. But the face... The face was such a riotous mass of deformation and gore that she could not be certain what it resembled, if anything. The eyes, horribly misaligned as they were, seemed to glow yellow from under a cloak of matted hair and flesh, as though it wore human remains as a cowl. It appeared to right itself finally after taking another half step into the living room, as though it had remembered how to use the twisted, broken-looking legs it supported itself with, and rose to a full height of nearly seven feet.

It was horrifying. It reeked of dead flesh and blood. It sent shivers down Kitty's spine. But most importantly, it wasn't attacking them.

What might have been part of a hand sloughed off the form, landing on the carpet with a thick splat.

"Well that's..." Hope began, then trailed off. No words seemed adequate.

"That's our mutant," Kitty whispered.

"It's...something," Logan huffed, rankling his nose.

The creature, the thing, the mass of flesh and fur and broken angles shuddered, and suddenly a split appeared in what could have been its back or shoulder. Kitty jumped visibly in surprise, shivers running up and down her spine from the sound of flesh tearing open. The fur seemed to break apart, to separate, and beneath, instead of muscle and blood, Kitty could see...skin? She peered closer. Yes, it was white, pale, human skin, stained red.

The mutant's mouth opened, the huge maw of jagged teeth, opened wider and wider, impossibly wide until there was a loud snap of bone breaking, and the bottom jaw fell away, loose and dangling, until the thick tendrils of muscle that connected it to the throat seemed to wither and break down before their eyes. What was revealed, what was uncovered by the new hole left by the absent bone and flesh, made them all gasp.

It was a face. A girl's face, stared out at them. Not a dead face, though. The eyes darted back and forth, the mouth gaped open and closed like a fish starved of breath. Somehow there was a living girl buried down inside the horror that stood before them.

"God damn..." said Logan.

Kitty appraised the figure before them again. It was grotesque and frightening, but it still did not appear to be threatening them in any way. No, they were in no danger.

"Hope?" she said. "If there was ever a time for your touch to do some magic, it would be now."

"Yeah," Hope flexed her fingers, took a long breath in, and exhaled slowly. "Let's give it a shot."

The creature, the mutant, the pile of blood and skin and fur, withdrew slightly as Hope stepped forward, but Hope opened her arms, splayed her fingers in a nonthreatening display.

"It's alright," she whispered, "I'm here to help."

"Heeeellllppp..."

The noise was so strained, so tortured, so drowned under grotesquery, that it took each of them a moment to realize that it had been a voice at all. It had not originated at any one location from the mutant's bizarre physiology. It was more of a bodily cry, seeping out from every crack and crevice on the form.

"Yes," Hope agreed, "I'm here to help." And then she laid her hands on the wretched creature that they had come there to save.

The light that erupted from the points where Hope's hands made contact almost blinded Kitty for half an instant. It was like a yellow strobe pulsing directly into her corneas. Both Logan and Kitty lifted their hands, shielded their faces from the radiant blast.

The mutant creature screeched in fear, or pain, or both, and there was a new smell now; One of burning hair and boiling blood. Kitty's eyes had begun to adjust now to the bright, intense light that emanated from the contact points where Hope had laid her hands on the mutant's body. She was suddenly aware of a kind of pressure, like a wind, pushing against her frame, as though Hope's curative abilities were actually warping the atmosphere of the room, creating pressure imbalances and pockets of turbulent air.

Something struck Kitty against the forehead, and she reached up and pulled it away, looking at it. It was a lump of bloody meat, unidentifiable as any specific body part.

"Oh, gross..." she frowned. Then she felt another lump hit her with a wet splat. The pressure of the shifting atmosphere began to intensify, and the light seemed to double in brightness. A third chunk of flesh pelted her thigh. Kitty guessed what was coming, and covered her face with an arm.

Without warning, there was a sudden drop in activity. A bizarre, unnerving lull, when all noise seemed to cut out, when the pressure and turbulent air seemed to die all at once. A momentary calm. Then, it returned with the force of a small bomb, the light collapsing around Hope's hands with a sound like a thunderclap. Blood, flesh, bone, cartilage, fur, and everything in between sprayed the room. Kitty closed her eyes in concentration and let the debris pass through her body unimpeded, hitting the walls with a thick splash, followed by the raining drips of blood streaming to the floor.

Logan, who did not enjoy Kitty's phasing ability, and Hope, who had been too distracted to mimic it, both set about wiping blood and pieces out of their faces and eyes. Logan plugged both of his nostrils in turn and blew, clearing them. Quickly, they remembered themselves and turned their attention back to the spot where the creature of broken angles and dripping, useless flesh had been before.

Kitty did not know what she had expected. Some fetal, human creature perhaps, purged of whatever genes had been misfiring and torturing their bodily home with bones and muscles that did not obey. What lay on the ground, an odd sort of vapor curling off of its body, was something of a surprise.

It was a dog. Not a normal dog, that was certain and obvious, but a dog nonetheless. It had the dark, shaggy hair and angular, sleek features of a wolf or a shepherd, though it was still matted and soaked in bodily fluids. It was huge as well. Close to the size of a small pony, if Kitty had to guess. Though it was admittedly hard to tell with the form curled up on the floor.

"Is it alive?" Kitty asked.

"She," Hope corrected.

"She," Kitty agreed, nodding.

Logan leaned down, touched the side of the massive chest, closing his eyes. If anyone amongst them even came close to being an expert on animals, it was him.

"She's sleeping," he said finally. "Steady pulse. Steady breathing." He rubbed his hands slightly over the fur. "Feels a little emaciated."

"I would think so," said Hope. "Her body has been stuck in a loop for three days, breaking down, transforming, rebuilding, and breaking down again."

"Good thing you fixed that," Kitty mused.

"I didn't."

Logan and Kitty turned to look at her, wearing their questions on their faces.

"I mean I couldn't," Hope explained, rubbing her forehead in obvious frustration. "I got a sense of what her genes were trying to do when I made contact. She's supposed to be an animagus, like Wolfsbane, but something had trapped her mutant power into never completing the change, so her body has been in a constant state of flux, not able to make a full transformation, just falling apart and desperately trying to stay alive. Every time something would get fixed, something else would disintegrate. She could neither transition into this animal form, nor could she back out into her human body."

"But she's made a full change," said Kitty. "She's okay now."

"No," Hope frowned, a look of genuine sadness drawn on her young face. "Just like I thought, this wasn't a real Light. It was something different. Something artificial. I'm not sure. I couldn't fix her powers like I usually can. Something shredded her mutant ability at a genetic level. So I did the only thing I could think of doing. I turned it off."

The three of them looked down at the giant, sleeping dog.

"But..." Kitty began, starting to understand Hope's somber disposition.

"I turned it off," Hope said, "But her genetic coding had become distorted. Confused. It retreated back into the form that was the most whole."

"You can't switch it back?" Logan asked.

"That will only put her in the same situation she was just in." Hope shook her head. "She needs extensive gene therapy before her powers will be anywhere near usable again."

"Hank." Logan concluded after a short pause. Kitty nodded in affirmation. Hank McCoy was the obvious choice for such procedures.

"We'll take her to the school," said Kitty.

"That's only part of the problem."

Again, Kitty and Logan looked at Hope expectantly.

"Like I said, this wasn't a Light. This was artificial. It was a deliberate and brutal attack on her genetic structure. Somehow, this was done to her."

Logan turned and looked around the penthouse. "You think we're looking at a crime scene here?"

"The only thing that makes me completely certain is the rigged lock on the front door," Hope said. "I think someone poisoned her somehow, then high-tailed it out of here. They were probably almost certain that it would kill her. It would have if we hadn't gotten here in time."

"Kitty," Logan said, leaning down to put his hands under the sleeping canine form, squatting and lifting the huge body up over his shoulders in a display that seemed almost impossible for a man as small as he was. But then, he was not a normal man. "I'll get her down to the car. You take her back to Westchester. Let Rachel know what's happened, and tell her to get McCoy on full alert. He should start getting what equipment he needs together now. Order it if he doesn't have it. Build it if he can't find it."

He started for the door, his legs working hard to support the tremendous weight of the huge mutant dog he carried. He turned and looked at Hope.

"I hope you brought an overnight bag," he said.

Hope raised an eyebrow, a quizzical expression on her face.

"You an' me are staying in New York," Logan huffed. "We're gonna find out who's doing this, and we're gonna shut 'em down hard before this happens again. Someone thinks they're gonna poison mutant kids in my backyard, and we're gonna put a boot on his throat."


	3. Chapter 3

_Jean Grey School for Higher Learning. One hour later._

Quentin Quire finished reading what he had spent the past two hours laboring over, frowned in sudden and intense disgust and disinterest, and clicked the red 'X' in the upper corner of the word document. The laptop's word processor asked him if he would like to save what he had written.

_Hell no._ Quentin clicked the button labeled 'discard' and closed the computer with just a bit more force than was necessary.

"Trite," he said aloud, removing his glasses and massaging his closed eyes. "Banal. Predictable."

He had been attempting for several days now to write the new manifesto of mutantkind. With the Scarlet Witch's spell broken and mutants finally gaining back some of the populatory ground they had lost, it seemed only logical to begin anew his efforts to rally his glorious people, to usher in an era of mutant dominance. But every time he put his ideas to paper, or in this case to computer screen, the brilliance of his thoughts seemed to wane and eventually disappear, the fervor and inspiration he began with always stalling, sputtering, and dissipating before he could finish.

Every draft read like something Magneto would have written fifteen years ago. That is to say, it was terrible. All pomp and circumstance and very little... What? What was he missing? It wasn't experience. Quentin had had more varied and intense experiences than most mutants his age. It wasn't for lack of leadership either. Even without his ability to subtly influence the minds of his peers, which, frustratingly, Rachel Grey was fully aware of and actively blocking at all times now, he knew he had what it took to lead the mutant masses. He had done it before, admittedly with varied results. So what was the 'x' in the equation, so to speak? What was keeping him from being the voice of his generation? Why could he not ascend to the greatness he so desperately longed for?

_Because you're kind of an asshole._

The thought was so sudden and foreign that Quentin half believed that his mind had been infiltrated by another telepath. But no, he would have felt such probing. The thought had been his own. He curled his lip and furrowed his brow as though he had abruptly smelled something foul.

_I am not._

_Oh? Name one close friend you have who you aren't a dick to._

"Who the hell needs friends, anyway?" Quentin asked aloud, and then instantly regretted it. Answering his own self-depreciating thoughts, especially out loud, was just too... Disney Channel.

He supposed it couldn't be helped. Quentin had been expressly forbidden to have roommates, and his curfew was the most strictly enforced on the grounds. It was only a matter of time before he started speaking to himself. Still, the room in the boy's dormitory was certainly better than living in the school's subterranean holding center, or, for example, living on another plane of existence outside of one's own body. There was the fact that his windows and door had been made virtually impenetrable, but beggars could not be choosers.

Quentin wondered idly if he was going soft. Not very long ago, he would have seethed in anger at the concept of being restrained in any sense of the word. He would have painted the names of his oppressors on the walls of the school, thirty feet high. Now? Now all he wanted to do was brush his teeth and go to bed. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes for the second time, and looked at his phone for the hour. Midnight, roughly. Well past the time that most of the students went to sleep. Quentin had been toying with the idea of adopting a new, more efficient sleep schedule of twenty minutes of sleep every four hours, but he had not found the right time to implement it.

He had just gotten up from his desk when he heard the distinctive crackling, scratching noise of tires on the gravel driveway that led to the school's front gate outside. It was not a loud noise, by any means, but in this relatively silent summer night in Westchester, there was simply not much to get in the way of the sound as it traveled over the air, through the glass of his window, and into his ears.

He walked the distance to the window, cupped a hand over the pane of glass, and stared out. Quentin was not kept informed of who was coming and going, nor were any of the students really, and so the sudden appearance of what he thought might have been one of the school's BMWs was at least of some mild interest to him.

Whomever was driving seemed to be in something of a hurry. While they did not swerve recklessly, or come to a screeching halt as they parked in front of the main entrance to the school, the rear tires did spin out slightly in the gravel, kicking small stones this way and that, and the engine thrummed with power and torque, even across the short distance it needed to travel from the front gate.

The driver's side door opened, and Quentin was more than a little surprised to see Miss Pryde step out. She had always struck him as a woman who was rarely impulsive or hot-headed, and the way she had just been driving seemed vaguely not within her usual character. Was something wrong?

His answer came, at least partially, in the form of Doctor McCoy. Though the angle of Quentin's room and his window did not allow him to actually see the front door of the school, nor the Doctor emerge from it, he did see the lumbering, blue-furred, feline-esque man as he stalked toward the car, clearly with haste in mind.

Quentin could not hear the few words the two exchanged. Indeed, he was far enough away that he could not even hope to read their lips or facial expressions. So he watched what they did. Miss Pryde gestured at the rear of the car, and seemed to make some sort of size indication with her hands. Doctor McCoy opened the rear door, peered inside, then looked over the car again at Miss Pryde to ask a question. Finally, the large, blue mutant reached into the car's interior, grabbed something, and began to pull.

All things considered, Quentin had seen enough examples of the odd goings on of the X-Men and their facilities that nothing should have surprised him anymore. Nevertheless, when he finally pieced together that the form Doctor McCoy dragged out of the BMW's rear compartment was a dog, and not only that, but a dog that seemed to exceed even McCoy in size, Quentin's eyebrows raised. He cycled through the limited explanations for such a bizarre occurrence almost instantly, and deduced that the huge canine must be a mutant. He searched his mental catalog for mutants that fit such a description, and while many came close, the school's own Rahne Sinclair for one, he could not find an adequate match. Certainly the size was a unique enough feature that he would have remembered it.

"Fresh fish," Quentin said in a low, sing-song voice, as though he were a seasoned inmate welcoming a new prisoner. His curiosity piqued, and guessing that maybe this newcomer was, for the moment, outside of Rachel Grey's realm of protection, he sent out his mental probes, searching for the mind of the mutant that Doctor McCoy was currently hoisting onto his back to be carried inside.

He was perturbed at how difficult he found it to locate any sort of fix on the third mutant. Doctor McCoy and Miss Pryde were easy enough. Despite the telepathic blocks that had been erected in the architecture of their minds, he was still able to sense them there. The third mind though, was strange to him. It was only after several seconds, a lifetime to a telepath, that he realized why: He just didn't have that much experience with the unique makeup of a dog's brain. The mutant's waking, human mind was hidden beneath the physical layer of animal physiology. The same way Quentin would have a hard time reading a parrot's mind, he had complications with this one.

"Interesting," he mused. Then, abruptly, he felt a sharp and uncomfortable sensation in his mind, and he withdrew instantly, wincing a bit. It was not pain, per se. Rather, it was as though his entire head had fallen asleep like a limb deprived of blood flow, and the fuzzy sensation of pins and needles seemed to perforate his brain. He knew the feeling well enough. He had just been served a telepathic reprimand by-

_Quentin,_ he heard Rachel Grey's voice flood the inside of his head, her tone steady, but with a low-burning aggravation to it. _What part of 'No probes outside of class' was confusing to you?_

_Jeez, sorry._ Quentin massaged a temple, trying expel the uncomfortable, numb feeling she had shocked him with. _Just curious. Miss Pryde has a new pet?_ He thought of adding a jibe about Doctor McCoy's potentially dating the giant dog-mutant, but then thought better of it.

_Hilarious,_ Grey said into his mind. _You and the rest of the students will be updated when and if there is something to be updated on. Go to sleep before I come up there and tie you to the bed._

Once again, Quentin thought of several jokes he could have made in response to Rachel Grey's warning, but with the uncomfortable feeling in his brain only just beginning to subside, he decided against it. Moving away from the window, he began to get ready for bed.

* * *

"You said 'a large dog,'" Hank let out a slightly exaggerated groan, resting one hand on a knee and removing his glasses with the other, panting slightly. "I should have brought a gurney to the car."

Luna Visconti, the name of the animagus mutant, as Kitty had learned from an ID in a clutch purse found in the girl's New York penthouse, now laid unconscious on Hank's observation table. In her canine form, she seemed even bigger in Hank's laboratory than she had outside. The machinery that crowded the space she occupied only made her frame seem all the more unsettlingly large. Kitty imagined that a full-grown woman would have little difficulty riding her like a horse.

She still could not help but feel as though 'Visconti' was a surname that she ought to be familiar with, but could not place it. It gnawed lightly on the back of her brain, and she made a mental note to scour her mind for the answer later.

"I said '_giant_ dog,'" she corrected, raising a finger and an eyebrow respectively. "And you should have brought a forklift."

"She must weigh eight hundred pounds. Maybe more." Hank replaced his glasses on the bridge of his nose, the fatigue from the effort of carrying Luna down to the subterranean lab apparently subsiding fast. He turned and looked at the silently sleeping canid mutant for a moment before turning back to Kitty and jerking a thumb behind him. "Logan lifted her?"

"He has the benefit of a rather more rigid skeletal system, and muscles that heal from lactic acid as fast as his body can produce it," Kitty smiled.

Hank considered this for a moment, then shrugged slightly. "Doesn't make me feel my age any less. I was in danger of breaking sweat for a moment. If Logan asks, I got her down here one-handed." He winked at her.

The levity seemed to break, and Hank went back into his methodical, calculating, doctorly state of mind as he began attaching all manner of medical apparatus to Luna's prone form. He touched several glass pads, and machinery began springing to life, scanning the dog-girl in, as far as Kitty could tell, every manner scientifically possible. The monitors and hard light holographic displays began to read out a flurry of medical information.

"Do you have what you need for the gene therapy?"

Hank looked up at her, almost amused. "Kitty, remember who you're talking to. Do you honestly suppose that I don't already possess every instrument that one could ever want in pursuing the modification of mutant genetics?"

"Fair enough," said Kitty.

"But let's not get ahead of ourselves," he said, going back to his battery of machines and monitors. Beneath the examination table, the rhythmic thumping of an MRI springing to life could be heard. "Let's find out exactly what happened first. I trust Hope, but she's a soldier, not a doctor. I'd like to see for myself what exactly has gone on in here."

"As would I."

Kitty and Hank turned to see Rachel Grey enter the lab. Despite the late hour, it seemed that Rachel had not yet even considered going to bed; She was still dressed the in the fiery red uniform that she sported during class hours on the school grounds. Not for the first time, Kitty had to forcibly remind herself that Rachel was not Jean Grey, despite their remarkably similar looks and disposition. She even carried herself rather like the late Marvel Girl.

Kitty wondered off-hand if she was setting some kind of personal record for amount of time spent in the presence of two different red-headed, green-eyed mutants in a single night.

"You haven't tried to wake her up, have you?" Rachel asked Hank.

"The thought had occurred to me," Hank said. "But I'm thinking you're about to explain to me why that's a bad idea."

Rachel turned to Kitty. "She didn't rouse at all on the trip back? She hasn't tried to communicate in any meaningful way?"

Kitty thought for a moment. "Mmm... Nope. Why? What's the issue?"

Rachel turned and looked at Luna's massive canine body, which was presently being scanned for holographic representation in Hank's computers. She frowned and shook her head slightly, as if disagreeing with the whole situation.

"Her conscious mind," Rachel began, "Her human mind, was deeply traumatized by the manifestation of her powers. If what Hope, Logan, and yourself say is accurate, she's made one of the more violent transitions into mutanthood that one could imagine."

"Yes," Hank agreed. "Having one's powers shell-shocked into existence, then turned against them, would certainly qualify."

"That's a really mild way of describing having your body melt and tear open continuously for three days," Kitty cocked an eyebrow.

"Well, I'm having a hell of a time finding her inside of her own head," Rachel frowned. "She's subconsciously retreated beneath the animal mind that was meant to exist in tandem with her human psyche. If she were to wake up now, you'd be dealing with a thousand pound, aggravated and frightened dog, not an aggravated and frightened girl in a thousand pound dog's body. If I can-"

The table creaked slightly under Luna's massive weight as her body shifted slightly. A deep, throaty noise, not unlike a growl, emanated from somewhere in her throat.

Each of them stiffened ever so slightly. If what Rachel was worried about turned out to be true, then they had not so much rescued a young mutant as they had brought a one-ton wild animal into the bowels of a mansion filled with children. Kitty suddenly felt rather foolish.

"Rach'," she hissed out of the corner of her mouth. "Any chance you can, you know, put her back under?"

"Her mind is probably ninety-five percent animal right now," Rachel whispered back. "I'm a telepath. Not a dog whisperer. I can keep her groggy. _Maybe_. Like I was saying, she's so deeply hidden under a predatory animal brain that it's hard to get any sort of fix on her."

"Old fashioned way, then," Hank intoned. "Kitty, there's a prepared syringe of ketamine on the nurse's table behind you. Be lamb, won't you? And let's all continue with our newfound habit of not making any sudden moves or loud noises. I don't think dear Luna will be immediately dangerous, but let's also keep in mind that we'd much prefer to not hurt or traumatize her any further."

As if on cue, Luna rose up slightly, shifted her weight again, and propped herself up so that she was laying on her stomach in the familiar fashion of most any large dog. It did not seem she was fully awake yet; Her massive, wolfish head seemed to dip and bob lazily with her breath, but her eyes had flickered open slightly, the canine third eyelid retracting as unconsciousness left her. Another deep, long, low grumbling escaped her throat, and Kitty felt the instinctive thrill roll over her that only came from being in close proximity to large predators.

Kitty stepped backwards, turning slowly until she could see the small metal tray table that Hank had been referring to. She scanned the various instruments and syringes until she found the largest one that sat next to a corked medical vial labeled 'Ketamine.' It was almost completely filled with the drug. Enough to make a bull-elephant groggy. She scooped it up gingerly and tossed it to Hank, who caught it deftly and uncapped it with his teeth. Slowly, quietly, he made his way towards the sleepy and almost certainly grumpy mutant dog.

The doors to the lab snapped open with a loud hiss and click of compressed air, and Mortimer Toynbee, the school's custodian also known as Toad, walked in, his attention fixed on something in his hands.

"McCoy! I'm not one to complain, but you've got to get this shedding under control. It's just plain disgusting, man. I can't even believe they let you inside. Would you just look at-"

"Quiet!" Kitty, Rachel, and Hank all hissed in unison.

Toynbee stopped dead in his tracks, dropping the clump of dark, wispy undercoat that he had collected. His eyes widened as he beheld Luna, and a cartoonishly high-pitched 'eek' escaped his throat.

"Oh," he whispered. "It's not yours. Sorry."

The damage was done, though. Luna turned her head, eyeballing each of them groggily and sniffing the air, the sudden commotion grabbing her attention, forcing her awake.

"Miss Visconti?" Hank ventured.

"Not going to work," Rachel lilted, her voice taking on a slightly melodic, sing-song tone in her hushed nervousness. "More dog than human, remember?"

Luna's canine lips parted, and a row of white teeth as long as Kitty's fingers was revealed, set into purple, shiny gums. A growl, a true growl of hostility this time, seemed to ripple the air around them. Without another word, Toynbee spun on his heel and darted out of the lab.

"Kitty? Think fast!" Hank tossed the syringe at her. Then, like a blue bullet out of a gun, he darted up to the examination table, mounting it in one swift motion, wrapped his long, thickly muscled limbs around Luna's huge frame, and pressed her back down to the table, pinning her there just as she had begun to rise.

Kitty was already moving when she caught the needle, being mindful not to stab herself in the hand with it. Her distance to the examination table was only about fifteen feet, but it seemed infinitely farther as Luna began to regain full, primal awareness, thrashing and baring her teeth, attempting to turn her head and snap at Hank, albeit rather weakly. Her claws scrabbled over the smooth metal and plastic of the table's surface, and for that Kitty was thankful. If Luna had been able to gain any sort of traction in her feet, she most likely could have thrown Hank off, even in her semi-conscious, exhausted state.

"Any time now, Kitty," Hank shouted. "No, not by her head! Do you want to lose your fingers? The hindquarters!"

Kitty obeyed, grabbing a handful of the loose skin that gathered by Luna's flank, near her rear leg. Struggling against the kicking and thrashing, she roughly jabbed the needle into the flesh and slammed her thumb down on the plunger.

A jolt seemed to pass through the massive canine body, and almost at once, Kitty could feel Luna begin to relax. Her eyes fluttered, her tossing and twisting became tiny, pathetic jerkings of protest, and she slowly lowered back down to the table, forced back into her prone position by Hank's considerable weight on top of her. Soon, she was sleeping again. Her mouth opened and a tongue as long as Kitty's forearm lolled out onto the table.

"Well, that was close," Kitty blew air out of her mouth in relief, dabbing at her forehead where a visible sheen of sweat beads had already formed.

"Agreed," Hank huffed, climbing back down off the table. "Thank you for the warning, Rachel."

"Thanks for wrestling a giant wolf dog," Rachel retorted with a wry, humorless grin, visibly on edge from the near-crisis.

Hank set about reattaching some of the monitoring devices that Luna had shaken off, restarting some of the scans that had been interrupted. He glanced at some of his screens.

"Well, it wasn't gracefully done exactly, but she's asleep again. And should be for some time." He looked at Rachel. "Now what do you propose we do?"

Rachel took a few tentative steps towards the table.

"Now that she's under again, I can spend some time trying to get into her mind. Her human mind. I think it will be best if I confront her telepathically, try to explain the situation. I don't anticipate anything but panic and disaster if we simply wake her up and explain that she's a dog for the foreseeable future. Teenagers already react violently enough to being told they're mutants without the news that they don't even get to enjoy a human body anymore."

Hank considered this for a moment and nodded. "It's worth a try. You try to piece together her mental condition, and I'll see about what damage has been done physically." He looked at Luna pensively, then at Rachel. "Do try your best to see her back quickly. I can collect all the data I want, but nothing would help me more than a first-hand account from Miss Visconti's own mouth. In the interim, I'll try to get her back into shape, nutritionally. She seems dangerously undernourished. Probably dehydrated."

He then turned to Kitty. "Kitty, dear, I know it's already late, and we all have a school to run and a full day of classes and lectures tomorrow, but would you mind jumping on the computer and do what you can't to put together a history of the girl? First and foremost, her family should be contacted. They might wonder where their child has gone before long."

Kitty nodded, but somehow doubted Luna's parents would be a pressing issue. The girl had suffered for three whole days in her penthouse with nary a soul raising any sort of concern until the X-Men had arrived on the scene. If Luna did have a family, they did not keep strict tabs on her. It was surprising for a teenage girl, sixteen according to her ID, but it was not unheard of, especially in a family that could provide penthouse suites that probably cost at least a million dollars easily.

"Alright," Hank said. "Let's get to work."


	4. Chapter 4

Hope Summers watched Logan in silence for a long time as he scoured the blood-soaked penthouse. Kitty had left nearly an hour ago, and had probably made it back to the school in Westchester by now. Eventually, they would call the police or some other branch of law enforcement and, on Logan's authority as an Avenger, the whole thing would be mopped up with very little fuss. If Logan had not somehow contacted them already. But, despite what the large apartment looked like on the surface, no crime beyond an attempted poisoning had taken place, so there was no real reason that they could not take their time with the crime scene themselves. As Kitty had been leaving, she had instructed Rachel to home in on the doorman she had knocked out, so that he would wake up in no pain and with a sudden and insistent need to return home. They had all the time they wanted.

Logan was not trained in crime scene investigation in any formal sense, but he was a tracker and a predator at heart, and he searched the rooms of the penthouse like a hunter stalking prey. Occasionally he would crouch low to the ground, touch something, smell it closely, then continue on his combing of the available evidence.

Eventually he centered his focus on the living room, around the sectional couch and coffee table.

"Here," he said. "There was someone else in the apartment, and he sat right here." He indicated a particular spot on the couch.

Hope could have mimicked Logan's sensory abilities to confirm it for herself, but she knew Logan's nose very rarely led him astray.

"So," he put a pensive fist up against his chin as he thought. "She meets this guy, they come back here for some ooh-la-la, and he manages to poison her, jury-rig her lock, and walk out."

"Building has a camera in the lobby, but the hard drive records over itself every twenty four hours, so no luck there." Hope frowned. "No sign of any kind of struggle, apart from the obvious, so unless he did some cleaning up, he would have slipped it to her without her knowing."

Logan nodded and picked up the drinking glass that still sat on the table. There was still some water inside, and he carefully tipped the vessel until a tiny amount spilled out onto the tip of his finger. He sniffed it, touched his tongue to it, looked at Hope and shook his head.

"Clean."

Hope returned to the kitchen where Kitty had left the clutch they had discovered shoved between two couch cushions. They had found the girl's California State ID card, but they had not gone through the contents beyond that. She opened the small bag and dumped it out on the counter.

Most of the items were more or less mundane. Mints, loose change, cosmetics, but a few things immediately caught Hope's attention. First were the two credit cards. One was a platinum American Express, the other a platinum Visa. The clutch contained no cash. It was not much, but combined with the fact that Hope could find no work ID or a separate set of keys, it meant that Miss Luna Visconti most likely had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth, or had a very generous benefactor.

_Spending daddy's money... Kids in this time._

Next she noticed the number of business cards. At least a dozen, all names she did not recognize, but maybe their suspect's identity was hidden among them. They all seemed to be for photographers, editors, fashion designers. Lastly, she found a slim, sleek, embossed invitation for a private party that had taken place three nights ago.

_Aha. Our girl is into fashion. Did you meet loverboy at the party?_ It was useful intel. If need be, Logan could use his considerable clout to get someone to cough up a guest list. The picture was coming clearer now, though. The fact that Hope had found no camera equipment or drafting board for design work, and the closet that had been packed full of designer brands, meant that Luna was most likely a model, or something very close to one. Or at least, she had been before she had gotten herself poisoned and stuck in a giant dog's body for the foreseeable future. True, the canine form was still _Luna's_ body by every definition, but the girl was almost certain to not see it that way. Not at first.

Hope was about walk back to the living room, but something clicked in her brain, and she returned her attention to the small, unceremonious pile on the counter.

_What's the one thing all posh young girls have that I haven't seen here yet?_

She quickly darted into the living room, where Logan was scrutinizing the coffee table itself.

"Hey-" she began, but immediately Logan raised a hand for silence, not looking up at her.

Getting down on his knees, Logan reached into his back pocket, found his wallet, and withdrew a credit card. Slowly, methodically, he began to scrape its edge along the surface of the table as though he were dusting. He slowly gestured her over with a curled finger.

"What am I looking at?" she asked, at first not seeing anything on the table that would draw such complete, unwavering attention from Logan.

"There," he whispered, and took his credit card and cupped hand away from the table.

At first, Hope thought that Logan had simply gathered a small pile of dust. But no. It was too white and crystalline.

"Ah," she smiled lopsidedly. "Luna and her boy toy had a little party."

Logan licked the tip of his finger, brought it down lightly on the smallest grains of the powder, and brought it to his lips.

"Cocaine?" It would certainly fit the girl's growing fulfillment of the stereotype.

Logan worked his tongue around his mouth for a moment, then shook his head, spitting a little onto the floor. "Amphetamine salts. Close to adderall, but not exact. There's something else there too, but I can't quite..."

Abruptly, Logan stood and walked to the kitchen. He returned seconds later with a plastic zip-lock bag, and knelt again beside the table. He carefully brushed the powder into the baggie, zipped it closed, and shoved it into the front pocket of his shirt.

"What is it?" Hope asked.

"Have you ever heard of 'kick?'"

Hope shook her head. She hadn't.

"It was all the rage before the depowering. It's a real charming bacterial substance that affects mutants. It's delivered with an inhaler. A few kids on campus were wheelin' and dealin' in it. Jacks up your powers and makes you feel like an invincible sociopath. It's pretty much the whole reason Quentin Quire went batty for awhile. Besides just being a bit of a prick in general."

"Charming. You think this has that in it?"

"No," Logan worked his jaw slightly in thought. "I never heard of kick sending someone's powers for a loop that badly, but maybe the two are related. The taste and smell are...similar. We might be looking at some involvement from the U-Men. Or some fringe group. There aren't many substances that can affect a mutant on a genetic level while leaving humans alone, and even fewer that are inhalants. We'll see what Hank says when he takes a look at this crap."

They both stood. One of Logan's knee joints crackled from the time spent crouching, the metallic ping of his adamantium bones adding an odd musical note to the noise.

"What was it you were going to ask me earlier?" he looked at her.

"Oh!" Hope snapped her fingers. "Have you seen Luna Visconti's cell phone?"

"Pardon?"

"Well," Hope looked around the penthouse. "From what I can tell, this girl has been bankrolled pretty generously, and is involved in the fashion industry in some way. It stands to reason that she would have a smartphone or five somewhere, but I haven't found one. Nothing else seems to be missing."

"Huh," Logan looked around the apartment. He had been over every last foot of the penthouse, and if a phone had not yet turned up, that was because it wasn't there to be found. "Good point. I think we're dealing with an amateur player, here."

"How do you mean?"

Logan's face adopted a pensive look as he glanced around the blood-stained apartment. "If this went down the way it looks like it went down, then there was a plan involved here. Get the girl back to her place, dope her up to the gills, jimmy the lock, and leave her to suffer the fallout. But there's too many things our boy missed. I'll bet anything his fingerprints are on that glass. He just brushed the dope off the table instead of wiping it down. And he took her cellphone instead of just hiding or destroying it, probably out of panic, thinking she might call for help, since there's no land line here. Those are all beginner mistakes. He was following a set of instructions, but following them badly. Whoever we're looking for, I'd bet he's not at the top of the food chain in this whole string of events."

"There's also the fact that the girl didn't die," Hope pointed out. "If that was the plan, he mucked it up pretty badly."

"The whole thing don't smell right," Logan said with an air of finality, looping both thumbs through his belt.

Hope retrieved the invitation to the fashion industry party and handed it to Logan, who scrutinized it closely.

"Not much to go on," she admitted. "But I'm sure the organizers have a guest list and bartenders we could question."

Logan grunted in affirmation and pocketed the glossy, embossed invite. "Between that and a phone we can try to track down, it's a start. And we need whatever we can find if we're gonna have any chance."

Hope cocked her head. "Chance of what?"

Logan started for the exit of the penthouse. "It's just a feeling, but there's something oddly impersonal about this whole thing. It don't feel like it was done to exact any sort of revenge specifically on the girl. I think there's pretty good odds that this is going to happen again. Hell, it might have happened before, and we just didn't catch it. If we don't get a grip around this thing fast, we could have a whole bunch of mutant kids dumb enough to ram this shit up their noses, and next time the cleanup might not be as easy as repainting some walls and laying new carpet."

Hope let this sink in a moment before following Logan out into the hallway, towards the elevator. She hesitated for a moment, wondering if she ought to close the door, but decided against it. Between the hole in the door where Logan had sliced off the lock, and the smell of putrefying blood and flesh that now oozed out into the hallway, someone was bound to come investigating soon enough. In all likelihood, someone under the Avengers' umbrella was already on their way to handle cleanup.

Logan was already waiting for the elevator when she came to stand beside him.

"Sticking around, you think?" he asked.

Hope did not look at him. Did not need to. He knew full well how seriously he had betrayed her trust when he had attempted to serve her up to the Avengers protective custody, which was a kind way of saying _confinement_, during the latest incident with the Phoenix entity. She had harbored a deep resentment for him for a long time for that, bordering on hatred. Not because she did not sympathize with the concerns that made him behave that way, simply because it implied an infuriating lack of faith in Hope's own judgement. But that had passed, and all that remained now was an intense suspicion for both him and his Avengers ilk. And so long as she was not the one being investigated, so long as she felt that she was working _with_ Logan, and not _for_ him, she supposed she could tolerate accompanying him for as long as she could be useful to the investigation. His question was not so much related to the case as much as it was an inquiry of whether she had at least come close to forgiving him. In some small way, she had, but she was not ready to share that with him yet.

He could clearly sense her mulling over his question, but did not press her further, or even so much as glance in her direction.

Finally, she said: "For the time being, I'll help out. Normal life was getting a tad stale."

The elevator door slid open, and she and Logan entered.

"It always does," he smiled wanly.

* * *

"Idiot!" Kitty hissed, taking a hand away from the keyboard and rubbing her forehead.

"Who?" Hank asked, not looking up from his own array of screens, on which were displayed various sets of information regarding Luna's physical status. Luna herself still slept quietly in her drug-induced semi-coma on the examination table. Rachel had pulled up a seat next to the gargantuan mutant dog, and had been sitting there with her eyes closed in locked concentration for a good fifteen minutes as she tried to gain access to Luna's mind.

"Me," Kitty frowned, and turned her screen on its swivel towards Hank. "Luna Visconti. _Visconti._ As in _Donata Visconti_."

The name apparently had no significance to Hank, who only stared blankly at the news article she had stumbled upon in her search for any information relevant to Luna.

"I should have guessed right off the bat," Kitty huffed, turning the screen back to face her. "The crazy-expensive apartment, the last name, the heap of clothes in the closet that I couldn't afford if I saved for ten years. Luna is the daughter of Donata Visconti, the fashion designer."

"Aha," Hank said, finally getting it. "All those lovely handbags with 'DV' inscribed all over them."

"Amongst other things," Kitty said rolling her eyes, almost totally gobsmacked by Hank's only passing knowledge of the woman's contributions to the fashion world. Visconti was right up there with the big names. Versace, Gucci, Dior, Chanel. All were direct competitors with Donata Visconti's brand.

"Well," Hank mused, "That should make finding out more about Luna a trifle easier. That and now we know who to contact and inform as to her condition."

Kitty barely heard him, and was now pouring through more and more articles as fast as she could find and skim them.

"Luna is trying to break into the biz herself, apparently," Kitty surmised as she read on, omitting the thought she had immediately after: _Or she _was_ anyway._ "Without much help from her mom, too. Ever since Luna has tried to break into modeling, she and her mother haven't been seen together at any events. Beforehand they were practically attached at the hip... _Wow they look alike..._ And Donata won't even use Luna as a model for her own brand."

"Making her start from the bottom," Hank guessed. "If a penthouse overlooking Central Park could be considered anywhere remotely near the bottom."

"She was interviewed for YM not long ago. Let's see... Doesn't attend school. Has tutors. Lives in New York full time, while her mother and other family members live in Los Angeles. What else... What else... What-" Something had caught Kitty's eye. "...Huh."

Hank looked up again. "Something interesting?"

Kitty enlarged the text from the interview with Luna to better see it, and began to read out loud. "_'I don't know if I'm comfortable yet with being a model. In a lot of ways, I think I'm doing it because I'm at a loss for what else my life should be about right now. I know I'm young, but I get the sense that I haven't really found my true calling yet.'_"

"Listless teenager," Hank observed, smiling slightly. "They don't know just how long life can be. They think they need it all figured out by the time they can vote."

"Yeah," Kitty nodded in agreement, "But to say it that candidly, in a magazine interview? I don't know. Sounds like she might be a little depressed. Seems like a bit of a cry for help, without reading into it too far. She never once mentions anything about her mother in any press. I wonder if there's some kind of rift there."

"It's possible."

Kitty went back to her searching. She wasn't exactly sure what she was looking for. Hank would be after cold, hard medical facts, of which there were scant few in the public or even private records. Rachel could just as easily extract any of the information that she was piecing together from her hacking, in any case. But the more she learned, the more she read, the more she saw Luna's face, or what had until recently been her face, portrayed in soft light, her eyes slightly dull and morose as she was dressed in some clothing item or another, the more she got the sense that Luna lived a far more complicated existence, at least in her own mind, than Kitty would have originally given her credit for.

Then an article a couple of years old popped up, and Kitty made a consternated noise that again drew Hank's attention away from what he was doing.

"Shit," she rested her chin on a balled fist.

"What's the matter?"

Again, Kitty turned the monitor towards Hank so he could see for himself.

"Donata Visconti was amongst the group of fashion designer icons who tried to have Jumbo Carnation banned from any mainstream runway or fashion event. Solely on the grounds of him being a mutant, and designing with mutants in mind. They didn't even try to hide it behind some phony PR veil."

Jumbo Carnation had been a near cult figure amongst young mutants before his untimely death, and the depowering of most of the earth's mutants. He had been one of the first mutants to gain something resembling mainstream acceptance, and even acclaim. Apparently the fashion world had not shared the general public's enthusiasm, and Donata Visconti had been amongst those making public and vocal statements in that regard. Kitty read aloud a quote.

"_'It is not proper or fair to showcase mainstream, human-oriented fashion beside items that have been designed with mutants in mind. Not only does it take away from what human designers accomplish, it makes a mockery of what we attempt to convey in our work. We attempt to comment on the status quo of culture. When mutants try to do the same, that's like putting a hat on a hat. Let mutants have their own fashion events. Ours are quite lively enough without models who secrete acid or turn into elephants.'_"

"Passionate woman. If rather misguided," Hank observed.

Kitty frowned and leaned back in her chair, feeling her brow crease intensely between her closed eyes. "This is going to be a really shitty phone call I make to Mrs Visconti, I think." She looked at her watch. It was ten pm on the west coast. Kitty toyed with the reasoning that the hour was too late to try and contact Donata, but she knew she was just grasping at straws. Whether the woman was anti-mutant or not was moot against the point that she had a right to know what had happened to her daughter.

Kitty turned to look at Rachel, who still sat in silent, rapt concentration.

"I wonder how she's doing in there."

* * *

Luna grasped the tiny cup of espresso between her thumb and forefinger, raising it to her lips and sipping the strong, hot, perfectly bitter liquid. She smiled slightly, savoring the taste, before setting it down again and taking in her surroundings.

Of all of the cities she had visited in her short life, Paris was easily her favorite. Her mother had taken her for the first time when she was little more than an infant, and while first those memories were vague and barely legible, she had returned many times since, and felt as home there as one could feel in a foreign city. The sun was warm and bright and drenched her exposed neck and shoulders, her thick, black hair gathered and secured in a loose knot at the back of her head. She felt good.

The cafe was not one she was immediately familiar with, but she liked it. She tried to think of what had brought her to this particular place, but that memory was not readily available. Luna felt lightly absent-minded for a moment, but the feeling passed quickly enough. It did not really matter how she had arrived. The espresso was perfect and the weather was fine.

"Luna Visconti?"

Luna looked up in surprise at the woman who had appeared by her table so suddenly she may as well have popped out of thin air. Immediately she was struck by the amount and intensity of the color red on the woman's person. From her hair to her clothes to the severe, almost bondage-esque overcoat she wore, everything seemed comprised of shades of fiery red and orange. On any other person, Luna would have found the stylistic choice laughable and absurd. But on this strange woman, it radiated an aura of power and confidence that Luna was both enraptured by and envious of. She was remarkably good-looking, with an athletic, mature figure that made Luna look like a pre-pubescent boy by comparison. She felt altogether intimidated and in awe. She was reminded of many of the women in the fashion industry who associated with her mother, who made themselves into stylistic, severe works of aesthetic art, transforming their natural beauty into something aggressive and predatory.

"Yes?" she said, not meaning for it to come out as a question, but somehow not able to help it either.

The woman helped herself to a seat across from Luna at the small, black wrought iron sidewalk table. "Do you mind if we join you?"

"We?" Luna looked all around them, searching for another party, but besides herself and this strange woman in red, the cafe was deserted. It was only then that Luna noticed that the sidewalk, streets, and surrounding buildings were similarly vacant. It was vaguely unsettling, but she did not pay it much mind. It seemed the least important detail at the moment.

"My companion and I," the woman smiled, and looked down. Luna followed her gaze and saw, laying quietly on the sidewalk by the woman's feet, was a black dog. A shepherd, by the look of it. Not the largest dog she had ever seen, certainly, but bigger than a shepherd breed ought to have been. Even laying down, its shoulder came almost to her knee. Normally, Luna was enchanted by dogs of any size or breed, but the cool, intelligent stare that this one met her eyes with made her feel immediately uncomfortable and on edge. It made no sign that it enjoyed her attention as most dogs would. It's ears did not prick up, its long tail did not wag. It simply laid there and stared at her.

"No, it's fine," Luna said finally, breaking her gaze from the dog, trying to shake off the strange feeling it gave her. "But... Have we met? I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

The woman in red smiled warmly. "No, we haven't met, but I was sent to check on you. To make sure you're alright. I'm glad to find you well."

"Is something wrong?"

"In a manner of speaking, but we're getting ahead of ourselves. My name is Rachel Grey. I'm an instructor at the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning."

Luna stared blankly. Was she supposed to know what that was? In most social situations in which she found herself struggling to keep up, it had usually been Luna's custom to smile and nod appreciatively until she discovered familiar social ground on which to regain her conversational footing, but she had the distinct impression that this Rachel Grey person wouldn't be fooled by that, nor would she be interested in it.

"I'm also a member of the X-Men," Rachel Grey added.

That was something that Luna was familiar with, if only in passing, the way every person in the modern world was familiar with them. She raised her eyebrows incredulously.

"The mutant fringe group, right? The team of..." she wanted to say 'terrorists,' as that had been the label she had seen most closely associated with the group, but blurting that out seemed at best rude, and at worst dangerous.

"We like to call ourselves emergency response volunteers," Rachel supplied. "We assist with and handle problems that normal law enforcement can't handle."

"Isn't that what the Avengers are for?"

Apparently Luna had touched upon a delicate subject, as Rachel's face darkened for just an instant. "I like to think that we are especially well-suited to mutant-related crises. We are an organization that puts the well-being of mutants first and foremost, and have the most experience with mutant-human relations."

Something occurred to Luna, and she felt an odd sort of anxiety as she asked her next question.

"You're an X-Man. So that means you're a mutant?"

"It's certainly not a strict prerequisite, but yes."

Luna was suddenly confronted with the fact that her mother would not at all approve of the meeting she was having with this woman. While, for most of her life, Luna had been exposed to mutant-related affairs only as much as popular culture demanded of her, she was more than aware of her mother's less-than-hidden distaste for mutants, at least as far as they were related to her fashion line and modeling agency. Luna was at least vaguely aware of one or two ugly conversations she had overheard in which her mother had come out vehemently opposed to mutant participation in industry events. She was not entirely certain of the context of her mother's negativity towards mutants in general, but if she were to suddenly appear at the cafe and see her daughter having a discussion with a card-carrying X-Man, who were at the worst of times considered fanatics to the mutant cause, Luna would certainly get an earful.

But Donata wasn't here. And Luna's curiosity felt unusually piqued.

"So, what can you do?" she asked. "I mean, what's your... Superpower?"

Rachel's eyebrows raised and her emerald green eyes widened with amusement. "We refer to them as 'mutations' or 'abilities.' Or sometimes 'gifts.'"

Luna nodded and waited expectantly.

"I'm a telepath and telekinetic," Rachel said simply, as though it were the most academic and uninteresting fact in the world. "I can read thoughts and move things with my mind, to put it simply. At risk of sounding immodest there's a bit more to it than that, but I don't have time to explain in great detail."

Luna found at first that her mind simply could not accept that information. She was familiar with what the words meant, but to hear them used so casually in conversation felt bizarre. "So you know what I'm thinking?"

"I try not to, unless I'm invited or a situation arises when it is unavoidable."

Luna smiled coyly. "So what am I-"

"Thinking about right now? The number seven. Now you're thinking it was a lucky guess. Now you're thinking of a larger number but haven't decided on one. Now you have. Four-thousand-eight-hundred-seventy-two." Rachel paused for a moment, as if listening to a silent voice in her ear. "Now you're wondering about my makeup. It's MAC and Shiseido."

If Luna's jaw could have dropped any lower, it would have hit the table. "That. Is. Amazing."

Rachel laughed and gave her a knowing smile. "It's just a parlor trick, really. Skimming someone's idle thoughts takes about as much telepathic skill as learning the alphabet."

Luna was surprised to find herself not only unafraid of this strange woman's gifts, but actively giddy with the excitement of it. It was like magic, but more visceral. "What about the other thing?"

"Telekinesis?" Rachel looked around their immediate surroundings until her eyes settled on Luna's half-finished espresso. Without a word or gesture, the dark brown liquid sprang up out of the small cup and began hovering in the air six inches above the table. It swirled and twisted around itself, as though it had mysteriously entered a small pocket of the Earth where gravity had ceased to apply.

Luna had the sudden urge to clap, but was afraid it would be seen as antagonizing to the woman. Instead she simply smiled and shook her head from side to side in awestruck wonder. "That's so cool."

Rachel lifted two fingers and the espresso funneled into empty space and back into the cup. "I'm glad you think so. Most people don't have such a positive reaction to mutant abilities."

Luna knew this and understood it. In the wrong hands, such a gift could be a frightening thing, but this Rachel Grey woman did not seem threatening or even overbearing with her abilities. She felt remarkably comfortable and at ease, despite the unusual nature of this unexpected encounter.

"I wish that this was the long and short of our meeting here," Rachel said, her voice abruptly losing some of lightness it had possessed only moments before. "But as I said, there is something wrong. It's why I had you meet me here."

Luna was suddenly confused. "But I didn't come here to meet you."

Rachel gave her an enigmatic expression that Luna did not fully understand. "No? Why are you here?"

Luna opened her mouth to speak, but was momentarily dumbfounded when an answer did not come readily her her lips. Why was she here? Not only the cafe, but what was she doing in Paris at all? The last thing she remembered, she had been... Where?

"Where is 'here,' Luna? It certainly looks like Paris, but what street are we on? What is this cafe called? Who served you the espresso? Where were you before this?"

Luna felt the amusement of the earlier exchange quickly begin to drip out of her mind, replaced with confusion and a vague sense of unease. The more she repeated Rachel's questions in her mind, the foggier and more elusive the answers became. It was hard to imagine that she had arrived at the cafe, what seemed like only a few minutes ago, without any sort of recollection of how she had gotten there. But nevertheless, the more she pondered, the more that seemed to be the case.

"I..." she said, trailing off before anything resembling a proper sentence could form.

Rachel leaned forward, placing her elbows on her knees and steepling her fingers under her chin. "Luna, try to stay calm after I tell you this, but right now we are having this conversation completely inside your head."

At first, Luna was half-convinced that she had simply misunderstood what Rachel had meant. Was it some metaphor or joke that she wasn't grasping? Some kind of test?

"How..." Luna stopped, licked her lips, tried to wet her suddenly dry throat, and started again. "How do you mean, exactly?"

"We're not actually here. Right now, our physical bodies are in the laboratory of the Jean Grey School. I have linked with your mind telepathically, and am helping you to create this astral projection of a real-world environment. You had an accident, I'm afraid. I don't want you to worry, we have exactly the right people that you need to help you working right now, but it was vitally important that I form a psychic bond with you before we can move forward."

"But why all this?" Luna asked, gesturing around them. It seemed an improbable concept. She could feel the sun, the light breeze. She could taste the espresso. She could smell the aromas of city life. How could it not be real? But then again, this woman had just read her thoughts with dizzying ease and made coffee float in the air. She had to concede that it was at least within the realm of possibility. "Why make me think I was here? Why the small talk?"

"Because something has happened to you, Luna. You suffered an intense physical and psychological trauma, and your human mind has retreated into a comatose state. I needed you to trust me and be accepting of what I can do for you. I needed you to feel comfortable, to feel at ease, to remember what it feels like to think like a human."

"What do you mean my _human_ mind?" Luna's eyes narrowed. There was a sudden knot in her stomach that seemed to grow tighter and more uncomfortable by the second. "What other mind would I have?"

Rachel looked down, for the first time visually acknowledging the dog that had placed itself at her feet. The large dog looked back up at her and wagged its tail slightly, but still possessed the same unnerving stillness and intelligence that had first placed Luna on edge. Something about that dog frightened her in a way that she did not fully understand.

"Luna," Rachel said. "I'd like you to meet yourself."

Luna stared blankly at Rachel, then at the dog, then back at Rachel. "...Huh?"

"You're a mutant, Luna." Rachel gestured at the dog. "This is a representation of your manifested abilities. This is you."

"...Huh?"

"_I told you I wouldn't understand."_

Luna practically jumped out of her chair, and had to steady herself. The voice had come from the dog. It did not work its jaw or move its lips in time with the words, but the sound had originated from its mouth. Of that there was no question, as much as Luna did not want to accept it. But what had truly shocked her was that the voice the dog spoke in, the voice that seemed to echo from somewhere in the dog's throat, _was her own._ It was slightly deeper, with a resonant growl to its timbre, but there was no mistaking it. Was it some kind of trick that Rachel was playing on her? Was she somehow using her mind-reading to make Luna hear things?

"What is this?" Luna asked, feeling a pressure rising up in her ribcage, as though her heart would punch through her sternum. She found that her palms and the back of her neck were completely soaked with sweat. "What are you doing?"

"Luna," Rachel said, raising both hands in a gesture of calm. "Try to relax. You need to listen to what I'm trying to tell you. You were drugged three nights ago in your New York penthouse. We don't know how or why, but you were given a narcotic that jump-started your mutant abilities, then sent them into overdrive. Given a few more months, maybe a year, and your canine form would have surfaced naturally. As of now, however, you endured so much genetic trauma that your x-gene has been damaged. Back in the physical world, your body is trapped in your canine mutation and you won't be able to change back. Not immediately, anyway. Like I said, we have exactly the people working for us that you need to help you. There's been severe splitting of different aspects of your mind, and we need to start fixing the damage. If you don't let me help you, you'll be trapped in a feral state when you wake."

"No," Luna said, shaking her head, squeezing her eyes shut, trying to force the words from having any speck of truth in them. She did not know what she was disagreeing with, what part of Rachel's account was the most unbelievable. Maybe all of it. Most of all she just wanted to cover her ears.

The dog stood, and Luna followed suit, rising to her feet so quickly and abruptly that her chair toppled backwards. She did not want to hear anymore, and she certainly did not want to be around that dog one second longer. She began to back away from the table.

"_We need to be one again,"_ the dog that spoke with her voice looked at her with steady, unwavering eyes. _"I'm nothing but your instinct. Your id. If we wake up and you haven't gotten back on board, we'll still be nothing but a stupid dog. We're going to hurt people, do you understand? Listen to me you spoiled little brat!"_

"Shut up!" Luna cried. She desperately wanted to turn and run, but somehow her legs would not obey. Somehow, she knew that she could not go anywhere if she tried.

"You're not helping," she heard Rachel snap at the dog. The dog turned to Rachel and lowered its pointed ears in a gesture of mild aggravation.

"_She's been coddled and treated like a princess her whole life. The warm and fuzzy approach is only going to get you so far. She's used to getting whatever she wants whenever she wants it. That's why she brought that low-life sack of shit back to the penthouse in the first place. That's why she parades around pretending she's an adult, like she knows anything about the real world. She's so clueless she can't even find her way back into her own consciousness. She ran away and hid until someone could come along and tell her what to do with herself."  
_

"That's _enough_, Luna!" Rachel growled. At first, Luna was shocked that Rachel was yelling at her too, but quickly realized that she had been addressing the dog. The dog... Luna... herself... glowered slightly, gave her a look of unmistakable disdain, and returned to Rachel's side, where it begrudgingly sat. At the same time, Luna found herself compelled to sit, in a way that was nearly beyond her control.

Rachel rubbed her temples, as though she'd been struck with a sudden headache. "Luna, _both of you_, I can't force you to cooperate with each other, but I can guarantee one thing: If you cannot help me repair the damage that's been done to your psyche, the chances of the school's teachers being able to help you physically are almost nonexistent."

It seemed like an hour passed before anyone said anything. It might have really been that long. Or it might have been thirty seconds. Luna's head was so fuzzy with anxiety and fear and uncertainty that she had lost all sense of relative time.

"If I'm stuck like that," Luna pointed to the dog that spoke in her own voice, "Why would I want to wake up at all?"

The large dog made a 'humph'ing noise, as though it was offended.

"I can't give you a reason," Rachel shook her head. "That's for you to figure out. But the fact remains that you're a mutant, and you're not in good shape. We can help you, but first you need to help yourself. And you need to start by accepting that this is you..." Rachel pointed to the dog, "...As much as this is." Rachel pointed to her.

"Look," she continued, "I don't want to get overly-philosophical with you, or try to come on like I'm your life coach. I know you didn't ask for this. Believe me, none of us did. But I've been into the deepest, most secret parts of your mind. I know you want more from your life than what you've gotten from it so far. I know you're young and unsure and you want to figure out who exactly you are. You want to start the adventure of living. I get all of that. I know it's not ideal, but maybe it would help to think of this as the first real test you've ever had to face. The first thing you've ever been really challenged with. It might not be what you always had in mind, but this is where you are right now."

Luna digested this information for a long time, and vacillated between every facet of negative emotion that she could experience. She felt as though she might throw up or cry or both. She looked down at the dog, as much as she did not want to, and met its gaze. She was startled to realize that the primary reason she had been unsettled by the dog had been its eyes. She had not consciously realized it until now, but the dog's eyes and her own were exactly the same: Blue-grey with a ring of copper coloring around the pupil. She was looking into her own eyes. The eyes that relatives and then young boys and later, photographers had complimented and fawned over. She was looking at herself. For the first time, the concept did not seem so completely alien. There was a connection between herself and this animal, and it was that instinctive link between them that had spooked Luna from the beginning.

Luna stood from her table, and the dog followed suit. She took three steps to her left, out onto the main causeway of the sidewalk, and the dog mimicked her in perfect synchronicity. She squatted low to the ground, and the dog sat, their eyes meeting now at the same level.

"Does this mean I have to be an X-Man?" Luna asked. "Do I have to stop modeling?"

As soon as she had asked the questions, Luna was rather surprised to find that she did not know which answers she wanted to hear. She had never particularly liked being a model. It had been a means to strike out on her own without ever really committing to anything. Even saying 'modeling' out loud made her feel self-conscious and silly.

"Those choices are entirely up to you," Rachel said. "We've brought you here to help you and ensure your safety, and find those responsible for putting you in this position. As soon as we can determine that you're no longer in danger, you can pursue whatever future you desire."

Luna looked at the dog again. "Can you do or say anything to help convince me?"

"_I'm not a circus animal,"_ the dog grumbled. _"I don't do tricks. You already know she's right."_

Luna looked at Rachel. "If this is really a part of my mind, it's being really rude to me."

"_She_," Rachel corrected. "And she's your basest, most instinctive aspects. Being polite doesn't exactly come naturally to her. When you broke down mentally, the part of your consciousness that runs on primal need was the part that fused with your new canine aspects. The process should have incorporated your whole psyche, but obviously that didn't happen when you were poisoned. Despite that, though, you still control the vast majority of real estate in your own head. That's why she has to do what you say, so long as you address her as yourself, mentally."

Luna thought about that, then looked at the dog. Or rather, looked at herself. She held out a hand that tremored ever so slightly. "Come here... Luna." she said. It felt strange and alien to form her own name on her tongue without it being self-referential.

The dog did not move. Luna looked at Rachel.

"You have to actually believe that she is you," Rachel said.

Luna closed her eyes, inhaling through her nose and out through her mouth. She could do that. She could make herself believe something. It was practically a required skill set for being a model. It was easy for editors to spot pretty girls who faked their smiles, who faked their sensuality, who wore armor over themselves, never really opening up. You had to believe the camera was not strange and obtrusive. You have to make yourself believe that you were happy and comfortable when you weren't. You had to believe that you had control, even when you didn't.

_I can make myself believe,_ she thought. She pretended there was a camera in front of her. That she was on a shoot, that she was being given instructions from someone behind the bright lights.

"Show me belief, Luna," she imagined someone saying. "Come on. Make me believe what you say."

Luna reached out a hand... To herself.

"Come here, Luna," she said, then opened her eyes.

Instantly the dog stood, walked to her side, and sat, looking up at her. Her tail swished lightly from side to side for a second or two before coming to rest. Luna could not help but laugh a little, the way one laughs when they have narrowly escaped walking into oncoming traffic.

The dog looked up at her with those unnervingly human eyes. _"Don't worry. I'm not going to hurt us."_

Breathing heavily, making a conscious effort not to hyperventilate from the anxiety the whole situation was causing her, Luna wiped the palm of her sweaty hand on the fabric of the skirt she wore, and gently, tentatively, ever so slowly, brought it down onto the crown of the dog's large head. Her fingers shook slightly, but she forced herself to keep her hand there. The fur was soft, the muscles and bone beneath hard and warm. The longer she touched the dog, the more she felt the truth of Rachel's words. This was her. She did not know how or why she knew it with such growing certainty, but there it was. She smiled.

She felt the weight that had been sitting on her chest begin to lift slightly. Her head began to swim, to feel hazy, but not in a way that made her feel light-headed or in danger of passing out. It was the heady feeling of stress being relieved all at once. Suddenly she was aware of a duality in her perception of the surrounding environment. It was as though she were viewing everything through two different sets of eyes. She realized quickly that, incredibly, she was experiencing consciousness in two separate forms. She was existing both in her human form, and in the mind of the dog. It felt correct. It felt natural. The more she embraced the sensation, the more at ease she felt. It was as though an invisible splinter in her mind that she had not even been fully aware of had been extracted.

She turned her head... _both_ of her heads, and looked at Rachel.

"How do I start?" Luna asked through two different but similar voices.

Rachel smiled. "You already have."


	5. Chapter 5

Calvin Connor felt the hairs on the back of his neck prick up slightly when he saw the grey Chrysler parked on 23rd Street, two blocks away from his apartment. He stopped in mid-stride, at a loss for what to do. If he had seen the car, there was no doubting that the occupant inside had seen him.

Since he had concluded his 'assignment' at the Visconti girl's penthouse three nights ago, he had seen the same grey sedan at least a half dozen times a day during his normal routine. The first day he had been convinced that it was run-of-the-mill paranoia, which he had fully expected. The second day he had grown mildly concerned. For the past twenty-four hours or so, he had been gripped in a state of barely-contained hysteria. He had spent the better part of the night ducking in and out of bars and restaurants, sneaking out of back doors and situating himself deep within the New York nighttime crowds until 2 o'clock in the morning. He had been convinced that it would have been impossible to tail him. He was clearly mistaken.

_How the hell did he find me?_

This was not how things were supposed to go. Get the girl to take the drugs, fix her lock like he had been shown how, and leave. Move on with life, forget it ever happened. That was all that had been asked of him, and that was all he had needed to know. Completion of his duties would mean that they would leave him alone, his secret would be safe, and he would be free to spend the impressive sum of money he had been offered to see the task through. That had been the bargain, so why the hell was he seeing the car?

He thought about turning around, running away, but where could he go, what could he do that would ensure that he would not be found again? He was not a spy or a soldier. He was a photographer, albeit a skilled one with an ever-more impressive fashion portfolio, but nothing more. Everything he knew about avoiding being followed, he had utilized already.

Calvin inhaled through his nose, exhaled out of his mouth, and began walking again. It was entirely possible that he was just being observed as a precaution. After all, what were they going to do? Kill him? He was certain he more than capable of defending himself against most any attack, even if he wasn't trained for violence. It was one of the benefits of being a mutant.

Six minutes later, Calvin was at his door on the fourth floor of his building near Gramercy Park. He felt the fear and stress leaving him as he came closer and closer to the familiarity of safety of his home. No one had emerged from the grey Chrysler as he passed by. No attack or interrogation had taken place. Maybe it really had been his imagination, against all odds.

The doorknob twisted just as he was about to slip his key into the lock, and the door opened. Calvin felt his insides grow tight and felt a hot flush run up his chest and neck. Instantly, beads of sweat began to collect in his armpits and the small of his back.

"Mister Connor. Come in, please."

Calvin frowned at the man. His fists tightened and his hands began to steam, the heat generated by them already rippling the air. He had never been forced to attack someone with his powers, had never needed to. But he knew the destructive heat he could generate would be more than enough to incapacitate any normal human being.

"No need for that. This is is simply a debriefing."

"You never mentioned anything about a 'debriefing' before," Calvin's eyes narrowed. "Or about following me."

"You cannot seriously expect us to put so much trust in you only to let you simply drop off of our radar."

"Who else is in there?"

"Just me."

Calvin felt the resonant heat in his hands dissipate. He paused for a moment, looking to his left and right down the short hallway and, satisfied that he was not being watched by some unseen party, walked through the threshold, the door held open by the man who had hired him to drug Luna Visconti.

"So what is this all about?" Calvin asked, tossing his shoulder bag onto his sofa and walking across the small living room to the window. He did not have any real desire to look out of it. Indeed, all that he could see through the paned glass was the building opposite his own, and the small alley that the two shared, which seemed to be in near constant shadow, even at noon in the summertime. No, he just wanted to create some space between himself and his guest.

"You took the girl's phone, as we instructed?"

Calvin frowned and walked three paces to his desk. He opened the top drawer, took out the Visconti girl's smart phone, and held it up. He had turned it off the moment he had left the girl's building, but even then the urge to throw it away had been overwhelming. It seemed preposterously stupid to keep the girl's phone after he had drugged her, but thus had been his instructions. They had assured him that the police would never be involved. They had even recorded their conversations and allowed him to keep a copy of the sound files on a finger drive as insurance.

"Good," his guest said, producing a pack of cigarettes from the inside of his jacket, not bothering to ask if it was permissible that he smoke, and lit one. He blew a plume of smoke from his mouth as he began his next sentence. "Turn it on."

Calvin faltered, his brow furrowing and his eyes narrowing. "If it's on it can be tracked."

"Let us worry about that. Turn it on."

"Is something wrong?"

"With what?" His guest stared at him for a long moment. His look was something beyond Calvin's experience. He had a pallor and gauntness in his face that could easily be mistaken as unhealthy. Indeed, Calvin had at first taken the man to be a recent cancer survivor when he had initially been approached. But it had not taken long for him to see that the man hid a quiet and confident power in his smallish figure. His light blue eyes seemed to spark with points of light, even under the shadow of his slightly old-fashioned fedora.

"It's just that..." Calvin licked his lips. "This meeting wasn't ever discussed when you gave me the...assignment at the outset."

In truth, Calvin had ascertained as little information as possible. He had been approached with little more than a concrete and verifiable threat from a person or persons who's origins or affiliations he was still not completely clear on; They would reveal him to be a mutant publicly if he did not cooperate with them. What was more, they had the ability to falsify connections between himself and mutant terrorist factions across the globe. Goodbye career in photography. Goodbye freedom. Goodbye everything he had worked for. The moment he had been convinced of their threat, Calvin would have done anything they asked.

"Mister Connors, we brought you on this assignment for three very good reasons. One, you are in a position that makes you vulnerable to public exposure. Two, you are particularly skilled at eliciting sexual relations with young girls. And third, you are a masterful liar. You'll notice that none of these reasons include your ability to outthink or outmaneuver us, which you can't. So, if you please, turn on the phone."

The last two points did not have the accusatory tone that one might have expected, but Calvin felt uncomfortable with them all the same. It was not that they were untrue. He had long ago reconciled with his ability and willingness to lie to and coerce young women into sexual relationships that they were in all honesty not prepared for. No, it was uncomfortable because this man saw those qualities as a means to his own end, and perceived them as actual skills, and not deep-seeded flaws in character, which Calvin had always suspected they were.

He was still not even fully aware of what had become of the Visconti girl, and he did his very best not to speculate. Of course he was not stupid enough to believe that there was not a chance that she had been killed by the drugs he had given her. The drugs that, they claimed, in high enough doses would have an adverse effect only on mutants. Though they had never explicitly mentioned 'death' in any conversation. He knew that possibility existed, but so long as there was the slightest bit of doubt in that chain of events, he would be able to live with himself. They had presented him with a situation where it was a choice between his own life and that of a stranger, someone he had never met and had no empathy for. He supposed that was the unspoken, unpleasant fourth reason they had contacted him; He simply didn't care about people as much as others seemed to. He certainly did not want to see anyone die, but given the choice? He would make sure he came out on top every time. The Visconti girl seemed nice enough, if as naïve and predictable as any young, tired-looking, whorish model he had dealt with in the past, but if it was between her life and his? To hell with her.

He looked at the phone, found its power switch, and turned it on.

"Thank you." The man took yet another long drag on his cigarette, the smoke curling and billowing around him like an ethereal shroud. The oily aroma of it was beginning to cloud the entire apartment. Calvin curled his nose in distaste, feeling the secondhand smoke burning his throat deeply, but still did not dare say anything to stop the man.

Calvin held out the phone for the man to take, but got only a bemused expression for his trouble.

"Don't you want it?" he asked.

The smoke was a clearly visible layer throughout Calvin's living room now, and it was beginning to make him feel slightly light headed. There was a thick, punishing aroma to the tobacco that he could not place. Calvin's ears and the flesh on the back of his neck began to burn and tingle.

"Do you know the really interesting thing about the compound we gave you to use on the Visconti girl?" the man asked. Then, not waiting for a reply, continued on. "It's a bacterial protein that can be bonded to almost anything. You can hide it in a powder, a liquid, a gas, whatever you want really. And it's incredibly durable. You could even burn it and it would lose none of its potency."

Calvin barely heard the man's last sentence, as he had begun to cough and wheeze slightly. He felt as though he had caught a sudden and severe cold. He began to pull at the collar of his shirt, trying to circulate cooler air around his body.

"It's true that it only affects mutants, but as I told you before, a large dose in a short amount of time must be administered before there is any real danger. It's why we've taken a liking to concealing it in narcotics. By the time you realize anything is wrong...it's too late."

The man took a last drag on the cigarette and dropped it onto the carpet, crushing it out with his foot. Calvin stared at the dark burn left by the smoldering ash, and finally understood, feeling as though a bell had chimed inside of his skull. Instantly, he forced the air from his burning, rapidly closing throat, holding his breath, and turned to the window, searching for the latch.

The lock had been sealed in a thick epoxy, as had every window in the apartment, in all likelihood. He could not have opened it if he had an hour to try at it, which he didn't.

_So, break the goddamn window._

He raised a fist, knowing it would hurt to punch through the thick panes, and not caring. He needed fresh oxygen. The smoke was like a blanket of poison pressing down on him. Had he inhaled enough to affect him? He did not know, but it certainly felt like it. His vision was rapidly deteriorating, collapsing into a tunnel of darkness. His whole body felt as though it were about to burst into flames, which was a particularly alien sensation to Calvin, who's mutant ability had made him mostly immune to higher temperatures.

He had readied himself for the pain of breaking glass with his knuckles when his ears caught a sound coming from behind him. It was like a whisper of air, the faint zip of something moving rapidly. He registered it only for a fraction of a second before the small leather club struck him in the base of his skull with an audible smacking noise. Calvin barely comprehended the pain of it as his knees buckled, his held breath escaping his lips in a gasp.

In the instant before unconsciousness gripped him, he heard the man speak, in a tone that was baleful, and almost bored.

"Thank you for your services, Mister Connor. May God have mercy on your soul."

* * *

Kitty jumped in her seat when Rachel suddenly let out a groan and opened her eyes. It had been almost three hours since she had plunged into Luna Visconti's consciousness, and while her mind had been hard at work, her body had been sedentary and still. Rachel turned her head this way and that, arched her back, and shook out her limbs, all of which produced a riot of crackling joints. She wore the beleaguered, weary expression of someone who had spent a night cramming for a test.

"Good news?" Kitty asked.

Rachel nodded as she rubbed the back of her neck, but with a pursed, reserved expression that was not one hundred percent positive. "I think she'll be okay. It was messy in there."

Hank turned in his seat, grasping a mug of coffee the size of Kitty's head which he had been nursing for the better part of an hour. "Her brain scans are showing a healthy increase in activity. From where I'm sitting everything is looking much better."

"Functionally, yes," Rachel said, running a hand through her red hair. "Everything that was severed is reconnected. I guess I'm just worried about how she's going to adapt to the next few days. She's become more or less receptive to her situation, but being told you're trapped in your mutation, and actually living in it are two different things." She looked at Luna's massive, sleeping form. "I worry that she's not as mentally strong as she would like to think she is."

"How do you mean?" Kitty asked. She had taken on a similar suspicion, and was curious as to what Rachel had experienced in the girl's psyche.

"For the sake of privacy and decency, I kept myself away from her specific memories. I spent most of my time in her subconscious, trying to repair damage. But I get the sense that there's some pretty serious issues with anxiety and depression lurking around in there. You see that a lot in kids who have been forced to grow up too fast or take on responsibilities they're not prepared to handle."

"She'll fit in great here," Hank grinned sardonically. "A lot of us were saving the world on a regular basis before we could vote."

Rachel shrugged, conceding his point. Then she turned to Kitty. "Did we get in touch with her family?"

Kitty rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed loudly. "You won't believe this, but I got put on hold by a secretary for an hour before anyone would talk to me. Then I got through to Donata Visconti's _assistant_, who then told me that, and I quote, _Donata would get back to me_."

"And you explained the situation?" Rachel asked incredulously.

"As best I could in the five seconds I was on the line with the guy. I told him where we are, the number she can reach us at, and that her daughter is in extremely critical condition and she should come see her immediately. I was told to expect a call in the morning. I sent a follow-up email for good measure, but who knows if that'll make any kind of difference."

Rachel sat in stunned silence for a moment. She looked at Hank, who only nodded and sipped his coffee in concurrence with Kitty's story. "Wow," she said finally.

"Right? With concern and compassion like that, it's no wonder Luna moved across the country to live on her own," Kitty sighed, checking the time on one of the screens she had been working on. "Speaking of the morning, we've all got classes to teach in just a few hours." She looked at Hank. "Where do we stand on Miss Visconti, if you had to sum it up?"

"Well," Hank turned back to his own screens, "I'm at a bit of a standstill at the moment. Whatever was done to Luna was rather impressive, from a chemical point of view. To affect someone's X-gene this way, you need to introduce a new protein, just like you would with any form of gene therapy. But this is more aggressive than anything I've seen in quite some time. The only thing I've come across that is this well-suited to affecting mutants is 'kick,' but this compound doesn't stimulate the X-gene like kick does. It tries to use it to annihilate itself, like a form of cancer. I could tell you more if I had a sample of what she was given."

As if on cue, Rachel raised her fingers to the side of her skull, as if answering an invisible telephone.

"Logan's got a sample," she said after a pause. "He'll have it here in another day or so, after he and Hope finish looking into Luna's poisoning."

It was a piece of legitimately positive news, and Kitty felt the weight that had been pressing down on her shoulders lift considerably. "How is the investigation going?" she asked.

Rachel paused again, listening to words that no one but she could hear. "They've got some leads they're following up on. In Logan's words, 'If I ain't found the prick in twelve hours, he ain't there to be found.'"

Again, Kitty allowed herself to feel slightly better. Everything was falling into place. This was why the X-Men existed, and why she had always been and always would be proud to wear their colors and emblems; Because when it came down to it, mutants sometimes got into trouble, and extraordinary people were required to help. She was one of those people.

Kitty looked at the giant mutant dog who snored lightly as she slept. She felt a myriad of emotions as she watched her. There was pity and concern and a bit of sadness, but there was also a growing sense of hope and optimism that things would be alright for her. It would not be an easy, smooth transition into the new world of being a mutant, but how many of them were?

"In the meantime I'll set her up on a series of my own cocktails," Hank said. "It won't fix her completely, but it will set her down the right path." He turned and looked at Kitty. "When you talk to her mother, it's critical that you convince her that Luna is in good hands here. I shudder to think what a standard hospital would be able to offer her."

"The students are going to want an update," Rachel advised. "Not that we're obligated to give them one, but Mister Quire is aware that something is up, and we might be inclined to nip any wild rumors in the bud. You know how he likes to conjure up conspiracy theories."

"Not sure what we're going to tell them," Kitty said. "Of course we'll offer Luna a place at the school, but when Hank finishes her treatment, there's nothing to stop her leaving again if she wants to. I don't want them getting distracted for no reason."

"All matters that can be addressed tomorrow after both of you get some rest," Hank said, polishing off his monstrous flagon of coffee.

"What about you?" Kitty asked.

Hank shrugged, as though he didn't fully understand the look of concern she gave him. "By the time I start letting something like sleep dictate my workflow, I hope to be an old greybeard."

"So... Like next year?" Kitty grinned.

"Hey now," Hank pointed a huge finger at her, "Don't you start. I'm healthy and spry as a spring chicken."

"And just as handsome," Rachel grinned, stifling a yawn.

"Goodnight, Hank," Kitty waved over her shoulder as she and Rachel stood and made their way to the lab's exit. "Keep us updated."

* * *

Officer E.J. Laughlin was not what he would have considered a 'worldly' man. Born and raised in Queens, the only times he had left the five boroughs of New York City in his thirty years of life on earth had been to marry his wife in her hometown of Yonkers, and to bury his brother, who had lived in Boston and died of leukemia two years ago. This awareness of himself did not bother Laughlin. He was a New Yorker through and through. Everything he needed and loved could be found in this city. Defending it was the first and most important reason he had become a police officer.

No, he was not a worldly man. Not a man of many varied experiences and ideas. But he was a beat cop, a good one at that, and doing his job well was all that had ever really mattered to him.

Nevertheless, being a cop in New York meant that occasionally you were going to see some weird and wild stuff. In ten years, Laughlin had personally witnessed two world-class beat downs involving beings of such immense skill and power that it had been difficult to rationalize the memory. The first had been a scuffle between Spider-Man and the criminal commonly referred to as The Rhino which had torn apart nearly three city blocks. The second had been a thrashing the likes of which Laughlin had never dreamed of, when he had witnessed Daredevil capture and subdue a career bank robber who had accidentally shot a killed a police officer and a young boy on what would be his last heist. Laughlin was not ashamed to say that he had delayed just a bit in telling the devil-masked vigilante to stand down as he broke the perp's nose and dislocated his shoulder with the blood-red club he carried.

Between those events, and the slew of 'normal' yet sometimes entirely bizarre crimes that he had investigated over the years, he imagined that there was not much that would shock him anymore. That had been before he had entered the apartment on Central Park West after dispatch had received a strange, barely intelligible call from the neighbors who shared the floor with penthouse P4.

Laughlin's partner, Faris Abdallah, whistled long and low as he pushed open the door and saw what waited for them just inside. The knob and lock had been sliced away, leaving a large hole in the door itself. The sight and smell that greeted them surprised and shocked them both.

"Jesus!" Laughlin hissed, pulling a wad of tissues from a pocket and covering his mouth and nose with it. Blood and mangled flesh covered the vast majority of surfaces in the spacious, sleekly-designed apartment.

Abdallah did not cover his own mouth, but instead snapped open the leather catch of his holster, drawing his service pistol. As per usual, Laughlin's partner was not one to react in any way to what he saw, no matter how grim or macabre. His impressive stoicism was part of what made Laughlin like him, and what made them function well together. When they had first met, Laughlin had not immediately known what to think of Abdallah. Not because he was a second-generation Muslim-American, but because Laughlin could not help but wonder what sort of masochistic fellow would put himself in the position of being a Muslim police officer in New York City, a place that had never been known for consistently generous attitudes towards many peoples from the Middle East. When Laughlin had finally worked up the nerve to question him about it, Abdallah had simply asked if things had not been more or less the same when Irish immigrants had become New York City police officers before the turn of the last century. Laughlin had chuckled and conceded the man's point.

Laughlin put his hand on his own unlatched pistol at his hip and nodded to his partner. Slowly they began to make their way into the penthouse, not entirely certain what to expect inside.

It was the smell that got to Laughlin more than the sight. He had seen his share of blood and gore, and one's mind learned to become desensitized to the wanton violence that sometimes came with the job. No, it was the smell of rot and decay that burned into his nostrils that made his heart thump in his chest and brought an acrid taste of bile into the back of his throat. There was no way to get used to the smell of dead flesh left to deteriorate in the open air, no matter how many times you experienced it.

"NYPD!" Abdallah called loudly into the penthouse, checking the corners of the rooms carefully. "If anyone is in here, make yourself known!"

Nothing. Silence permeated the still, red-stained apartment that looked more like a horror movie set than a real, actual place. What the hell had gone on here?

After a two-minute search, both men concluded that no one was hiding the penthouse.

"Call it in," Laughlin advised Abdallah. "Let's establish the crime scene and..."

Laughlin trailed off when he realized that someone was standing in the still-open doorway of the penthouse. A woman.

"Excuse me, ma'am," he raised an open hand to her, meant to discourage her from entering any further. "This is a crime scene. I'm going to need to ask you to leave unless you have some business here."

The woman, a red-head with an athletic figure, who looked like she had just come from a gym, dressed as she was in dark-colored sweats and running shoes, simply smiled at him and shook her head slightly.

"You could say that I do," she said, and held up a badge that Laughlin did not immediately recognize. He approached her cautiously, resting his right hand on his belt, not far from his holster. There was something about the casual attitude of this woman that made him uncomfortable. He felt as though he recognized her from somewhere, but could not place it. He studied her for a moment, then leaned forward to inspect the badge she held out at eye-level.

"Oh!" Laughlin said, feeling himself straighten almost by reflex as he digested the authority and power that were vested in the identification that he read. Understanding flooded into his brain, followed by an intense and mysterious anxiety, as though he were back in middle school being confronted by a teacher. "I beg your pardon, Miss Black Widow."

"Just call me 'Black Widow,'" the red-head said as she folded up the leatherette that held her badge and put it back into her hooded sweatshirt. "Or better yet, don't call me anything at all. This crime scene is under Avengers jurisdiction now. I'll need statements from both of you."

"I thought you hero-types always wore body armor and masks."

The woman, Black Widow, looked at Abdallah with a small measure of surprise. If Laughlin had still been standing beside his partner, he would have elbowed him in the ribs. After a pause, she grinned slightly and put a hand on a braced hip. "Well, on special occasions we like to keep it casual."

"Any idea what happened here?" Laughlin asked.

"That's still under investigation," Black Widow said. "But we have no reason to believe that anyone was seriously harmed."

Laughlin and Abdallah gazed around the blood-soaked penthouse dubiously.

"If you don't mind," she gestured at the door, "You officers will find an investigative team waiting downstairs who will debrief you on the situation. I would appreciate it if you could both keep this little mess to yourselves."

The two men slowly nodded, beginning to understand the serious nature hidden beneath the woman's casual, friendly demeanor, and slowly filed out of the penthouse.

Natasha watched the two men leave, waiting for the elevator doors to close before speaking into the wireless communications device she wore in her ear.

"Two officers on their way down need a going away package," she relayed to the SHIELD agents waiting on the ground floor. "Cleanup team come on up."

Next, she pulled her phone from the back pocket of her sweatpants and found a name in her 'recent calls' list. She tapped it and held the phone to her ear as it dialed.

"Yeah?" Wolverine answered on the first ring.

"We're all set at the American Towers building," she said. "You owe me a beer for cutting into my workout schedule. I don't like spending my night off chasing cops off a crime scene."

"You were the only one available," came Wolverine's gruff reply, but then he conceded: "Put it on my tab."

"You know I actually keep track of things like that, right? You're going to need a dump truck full of Stella Atrois if I ever call that tab in."

There was a long pause, and for a moment Natasha thought he might have hung up.

"Hello? Wolverine?"

"...You actually drink that shit?"

Natasha frowned. "Oh, ha ha. This coming from a guy who has smoked fifty-cent stogies since the dawn of man and drank PBR before it was cool."

"Goddamn right."

She heard the click of the connection severing, and shook her head, grinning. She turned and looked at the penthouse, really taking it in for the first time, and wrinkled her nose a bit.

"What a mess."

* * *

_**Hey folks. Hope everyone is enjoying the story so far. I'm having a good time writing it. Thank you, Jeanniebird, Marigab, and our anonymous friends for the reviews.**_

_**Marigab - Rogue will be in the story. I don't know how big of a role, but I like her too much to shun her out completely.**_

_**Jeanniebird - I agree that the Paris scene was quite similar to the scene from Inception. I tried to write an alternate version that was completely different, but in the end just didn't like it very much. So, I decided to just go with it.**_


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